NOVALIS

Novalis! Here I go again with a review of an excellent album. Novalis is a German band who rocked the seventies with their romantic sound and I think it's appropriate to say that that sound was begun here on their second record with the name "Novalis" from 1975. The cover picture is wonderful. In the bottom we see a sleeping or a dead lady and over that we see flying birds. The colourful cover is an artwork that perfectly fits the style and the quality of this music.

I do love Novalis. There is something special with them that is hard to find in other bands even here where the singer isn't Mühlböck as I am used to here but the bassist Heino Schünzel. That is though a big progression from the debut where they hadn't a perfect singer. The other musicians here were Hartwig Biereichel, the drummer, Detlef Job, the guitarist, Carlo Karges, the guitarist and keyboardist and Lutz Rahn, the keyboardist. It's a quite short but eventful piece of music.

The starting song is mayby the least interesting track. Well the composition is lovely in many aspects but I lack the gloryness that this band uses to radiate(8/10). Then comes a fantastic song which I totally love. "Wer schmetterlinge lachen hört"(10/10) has a lovely text that is sung beautifully by Schünzel. The romantic song is surrounded by progressive, sensitive and splendid music. I think you'd like it to. Then comes "Dronsz"(9/10), an atmospheric and intersting track that, perhaps, is more Krautrock than Novalis ever should become. "Impressionen(Nack themen der 5 symphonie von Anton Bruckner)" is a classical piece that perhaps could grow more but it's not what I know Novalis for(8/10). The album's second best composition is "Es färbte sich die wiese grün"(10/10) which is composed from an original text by Georg Philipp Friedrich Leopold von Hardenberg, the romantic poet which nickname "Novalis" gave name to the band. That is a lovely composition with both great lyrics, vocals and instruments. It's also closes the album in a very fine way.

My overall impression of "Novalis" is that it was now the band found themselves and this record gives us wonderful German prog that holds its position even today. My rating for every song makes the total average 4.5 stars, but for this band am I ready to go far. Five stars!