TRAUMA

Gomorrha's debut album released in 1971, after they were completely dissatisfied with the recording of what was supposed to be their debut album. Instead they shaped up the songs and rerecorded them, instead of the german lyrics which apparently did not work, they released the album with english vocals. The album consists of 8 short songs and one 13 minute song, 'Trauma', this song is so out of place, it doesn't have the slightest resemblance to the rest of the album, while the majority of the album is in the vein of typical 60's beat psych songs, trauma is a prog beast which sees the band set their eyes towards something more ambitious than the rest of the material.

The music is mainly some hard edged 60's rocky tunes with a slight psych atmosphere around it, really arriving a few years late to this scene, and not presenting us with anything new, since this all sounds like a 1967/8 recording, not sure why the band recorded those songs since this kind of music was clearly gone by that time, and had evolved to a much more mature approach. The band's sound is lying heavily on guitars which include a few moments of fiery solos and other hard edged guitar sounds, but this is hardly enough to satisfy this progressive listener. What saves this album from being a total embarrassment is of course the album's title song, Trauma, clocking at 13 minutes, this piece is far from being a prog masterpiece but it still quite nice to listen to, it is actually a big jam, the music is psychedelic, and after a nice intro the singer is going aside and guitars starts to solo which leads them to the next part, feedback and distortion noises, keys are also added which is nice, they solo a bit and end this song, overall very good. If the album would continue in this vein, this could have been one of the coolest jams out there.

Nothing to be excited by, but it is nice to have if you are a completionist or a collector, better going to their next album, which showed a much more elaborated writing and playing. The CD version contains the german sung version as well, which is even worse than the english version, recording quality is rough and the arrangements are not good. Trauma is saving this album from being a 1 star. Avoid.