PAKOON MAAILMAA

Finnish short-lived band APOLLO, featuring members of the 60's pop groups Topmost and Soulset, was founded in 1969 with a clear source of inspiration in mind: LED ZEPPELIN (whose debut had come out at the time). The sole album "Apollo" (from 1970) has received rather unfavourable reviews here. Understandably so, because it's a very mixed bag of heavy stuff, balladry and drummer Edward Vesala's two experimental instrumental pieces, and the proto-heavy rock style was so new thing back then that the studio people working on the recording didn't much have a clue. It's also the rough, throaty vocals of Harri Saksala, singing in Finnish, that can be a red flag to international prog listeners.

Svart Records have re-released "Apollo" on vinyl, and the package contains this single too. I can't review the album since I've done that quite a long ago, but here's the debuting review for the 7". It turned out to be practically useless as a supplement, since both tracks are form the album, unlike I was hoping with 'Ohjelmoitu ihminen' (= Programmed man).

On the LP its name is 'Hideki Tojo 1884-1948'. This song written by Harri Saksala is among the heaviest and grittiest of the set, telling - in the first person - of a soldier who just obeys the order to kill. I googled the name and found out that Hideki Tojo was a general, and Japan's prime minister during WW2. In a way the technically imperfect recording fits to this heavy song's nature. As a composition it's not much to celebrate, just a riff-based heavy rock piece of under three minutes, but especially Eero Lupari's electric guitar shows how well the band had absorbed the new genre.

The other song 'Pakoon maailmaa' (= Escaping the World) is not a heavy rock song; instead it is quite melodic and mellow, more or less similar to what Saksala would later perform in the realms of the usually poetry-based vocal music, except that the sound is of a rock band, and that the lyrics are deeply somber, in a contrast to the lighter music. This is among the best tracks of the album.