ODIN

Man, what a letdown. Man, what a bring down, Man if this is Odin's trip I wanna get off. Let's just say my expecations were very high on this one, I had heard about it as a teenager, and I had wanted to own it for years. I found the reissue and bought it. I put the needle down on the record and thought I'd be in for something really earth shattering. My reaction was, to put it bluntly, this is not very good at all. The playing for starters is barely together, in fact I find it hard to believe that this was a professional outfit. Particularly shifting from one passage to the next is hard for Odin. When a guitar comes in to replace an organ riff or vice versa it sounds as if the whole ceiling is caving in on them! Out of all four band members not one is particularly impressive, and in a musical genre where a keyboard player is very important Odin fail almost completely. The guitar player is OK, mediocre, and commonplace, but he tries too hard to overcompensate for his lack of ability and same goes for all four of the group. And I haven't even mentioned the vocals yet, which are so straining and slurred that it makes it hard for me to believe Odin really were British. They seem to be struggling with the language and this leads to huge problems. I kept thinking something would come in to change the downward-from-the-start flow of this album, but it doesn't. Worst thing of all might be the fact that Odin aren't even heavy! The music veers towards the jazzier side of prog rock, but not in a good way. "Tribute To Frank" shamelessly steals from Zappa in a blind homage, and the worst inclinations of ELP (and I LIKE Emerson Lake And Palmer up to and including Trilogy) come into play with inept Emerson steals. As we all know Keith Emerson is a great musician, Odin are not. The constant pseudo jazz fake musical poetry isn't poetry, but doggerell. I wish this wasn't such a damning review of this album, but I tried to see something that lived up to what I hoped this would be in the music, and I couldn't no matter how hard I tried. I didn't want to like this album, I wanted to LOVE IT. With the music as bad as it is and the bad vocals, awful lyrics, and wasted production time all I can do now is know that I've heard this group for what they really are, and that is something barely higher than exploitation level which at least can be fun. Don't waste your time on this album, this group are best forgotten about, and "Clown" is a really bad close to the album where all the weaknesses bombard you. Pretty bad.