METROPOLIS

Metropolis was a German Krautrock band that were only together for a couple years but still innovative at the time. The one album they made, Metropolis, serves as a testament to their uniqueness and creativity for such a small and overshadowed gem. It's quite a polarizing album to be honest, and on the one hand you have the excellent music, and on the other you have the lackluster production and weird vocal styles. Metropolis mixes symphonic prog and psychedelic rock, all while retaining the Krautrock approach. Almost all the music has a slight twinge of experimental rock, with the band often delving into uncommon time signatures and instrumentation. I feel that although this is all throughout a solid album, Metropolis had a lot more potential inside of them, and it's quite a shame that this was all they were able to pull out of that originality. Despite this, I would still consider this album a strong testimony to these men and their carries. Speaking of the men that played on this album, it features Michael Duwe, former singer of the fellow Krautrock band Agitation Free, and drummer Thomas Hildebrand of another Krautrock band known as Mythos. The album also features Helmut Binzar on guitar, Manfred Optiz on keyboards, Michael Westphal on bass, and Ute Kannenberg as the second lead vocalist along with Duwe. The album also has multiple orchestral arrangements by Hartmut Westphul, along with Heinz Loch on flute and Guiseppe Solera on oboe.  

The album opens with the low organ of the first song, Birth. You can hear slight emotion within the song, with minuscule bursts of percussion every couple of seconds. When the rest of the band starts to play, on the other hand, it sounds like a song you'd find on an early Rick Wakeman album. The first vocal sections have almost no instrumentation, with it for the most part simply being narration. This passage sounds alike to Poseidon's Creation by Eloy, with the vocals sounding very much the same to Frank Bornemann and the overall structure of the song being similar to Poseidon's Creation. The song talks about the main character of the album and this so-called "Metropolis" depicted in the music and the album cover. The instrumental portions of this song are quite good, with a steady and progressive rhythm section with a guitar solo akin to John McLaughlin's style. Birth was a great way to start off the album and provides an idea of the creativity this band has and what they'll implement in the rest of the album.  

I will admit, I'm not a fan of the opening of the next song, Superplastikclub. It has an okay melody, but the singing feels too theatrical and weird for me. It would get better, but the way they make the singing better for the next part is that they would cut the singing entirely and just do narration. I was ok with the narration of Birth because it followed the song, but this one has just spoken words in the paragraph of the song. That doesn't mean I don't like it; I just feel it could be better. After the kickoff to the song, it goes into this cool and relaxed element with Kannenberg talking about life in the Metropolis. Some of the horn arrangements in this take the listener back to the sound of Swing music in clubs, with Chicago having a similar vibe. The guitar solos are akin to the ones on RIP by Banco, in the sense that they're technically complex but are drowned out to keep the listener on their feet in a sense.  

The title track of the album starts off sounding mute but quickly spirals into this chaotic explosion of instrumentation of spontaneous solos and fills from every member before finding its path into this exciting and eccentric fusion style that completely blows the doors of the hinges of what was perceived as the band's limits. Other than this, the song has pretty basic flow music. I will note that some of the solos sound like what Martin Barre of Jethro Tull would do years later on Baker St. Muse, but the song just sort of dies a bit after the opening. After those bits of the song, however, the band takes us on a journey into this trippy and ambient world inside the title track that was entitled The Dream to show the main characters revelation about Metropolis. You can hear echoes of tin whistles, owls, birds, clock chimes, and various metallic sounds in the distance in this foggy form. I love how areas of this track are drenched in distorted mellotron and organ, with it adding so much more fear to the whole sense of this song. When The Dream ends, the main character sings about how he needs to leave Metropolis and everything inside Metropolis, backed by some average playing from the band. Overall, side one was great and had some pretty far-reaching experimentation with the band's sound and styles at the time.

  Side two opens with Dreamweaver, a nice classic rock-sounding song. It starts with distant studio chat before one of the members counts the band in and begins to play in a hard rocking style similar to Hymn 43 by Jethro Tull. The main lyrical focus of this song is about the possibilities of glory and discord within Metropolis, though it's hard to actually pick them out in a regular listen. The band takes very unique stands on timing, seemingly finishing and beginning new vocal sections and musical arrangements whenever they like. Around the three-minute mark, the band calms down a bit and plays this groovy melody, which itself evolves into something more akin to a New York jazz club, especially with the supporting horn work. The song comes to a close after a refrain of the beginning rhythms and a quick stop instead of the normal fade out, which was popular at the time. All in all, it's a good start to side one. It still captures this band's blending of progressive rock and experimental rock as well as showing creativity few German bands achieved. I'd also like to take the time to say that I'm surprised none of these songs became a radio hit. I can definitely see an adventurous radio DJ playing one of the shorter songs on the album, like this one.

  The next track (and in my opinion the weakest) is Glass Roofed Courts. Instead of continuing the path they had been going down for the entirety of this record, Metropolis goes for a more baroque and folk pop direction for this song. The opening acoustic riff is good, and the lyrics are inspirational with their talk of a near future for the city described in Metropolis, but it's just a plain song. There's really nothing big or noteworthy in this song, and apart from a short Spanish-inspired sequence of the song, you can mainly just brush past this one and not miss much. But for more detail, it has a growing sense of depth and happiness that gets complimented by the orchestral arrangements.  

The last song on this record, Ecliptic, begins with some spoken word that sways into a jazz-inspired rhythm section of only symbols and keyboards for the time being. The band plays this spiraling down tune that feels alike to some of the ending sections of 2112, with the lyrics indicating that this story is finally about to come to an end. They continue this descending trend of the music and play another improvisational section by the sounds of it, with a fantastic guitar solo weaved inside its boundaries. There's also an interlude in the song in the form of a short drum solo, reminiscent of the one found on Ritual, and it grows into what seems to be all-out jazz chaos. The nonstop power in the insides of this area of Ecliptic is indeed my favorite part of the album, with just the right amount of fusion elements and, again, more improvisational progressive music to keep me interested and enthralled at this moment on the album. The end of the song is similar to the opening, with the parallel Wakeman keyboards and orchestral notes boiled into an ever-changing rock beat.

  In conclusion, Metropolis shot for the moon but fell before they made it big. They had a huge opportunity to dominate the German music scene, but their career fell short before they could release any more material. The material on this record is worth checking out for enjoyers of mainly psych and progressive rock listeners (which the two together can somewhat mean Krautrock), but in the grand scheme of things, this wouldn't be an album you see on a list of essentials or what to listen to for a beginner in the progressive rock genre. This is the type of album for adventurous listeners who are willing to breach out into obscure albums and bands. For now, this is all we have of them, and while it's not the best, it's a testimony to their potential. I feel this is a strong 3/5 to a 3.5/5, but for now I'll be sticking to a 3/5 for the roundup.