INSIDE

Eloy has been most probably of all German progressive bands the most successful one, at least in an international frame. Many times they have been entitled as "German Pink Floyd". Okay, this might be slightly exaggerated but though I couldn't say that they've been the best German band (something which is hard to say anyway) they certainly can be considered one of the best ones. During their band's career they've shown a quite interesting development from progressive heavy bluesrock on their debut over psychedelic space rock ala Floyd into more symphonic type of Prog on their later releases like Dawn, Ocean and Planets.

So "Inside" had been their first "real Prog" album and as the best proof for that it opens with the side-long track "Land of no body" which must be one of the best tracks they've done in their early phase. Starting rather quietly with a somber sound it develops soon into quite typical early 70's Prog highly dominated by organ play. Right in the middle of the track there is an impressive psychedelic organ solo before it starts sounding heavier with excellent guitar-organ interplay and some screams by vocalist/guitarist and main songwriter Frank Bornemann. Side two continues in a similar vein with the title track but the remaining two tracks are sounding significantly different. "Future City" in particular sounds quite non-typical for Eloy, mainly acoustic with lots of percussion, no organ here at all and brings early Tull into one's mind. Last track of the original vinyl edition "Up And Down" is dominated again by Hammond sound and a rather slowly paced and bluesy one with sluggish, but nicely fitting vocals by keyboarder Manfred Wieczorke who used to be the second one besides Bornemann contributing to the compositions.

As a summary I think this record should be considered a worthy purchase for any Prog fan, the remastered CD re-issue from 2000 contains the two more radio-friendly tracks from the single they've released soon after as bonus which are a nice extra but of course not on par with the tracks on this album.