CONCRETE CITY

I love this band for their two first memorable efforts which deeply bring the listener in a mystical and psychedelic journey throw time and space...Concrete city is just disconcerted. I always wondering if the guys who play in this album belong to the original team (I think that the frontman and singer Stephan Kask is the only one original member). Musically it's near to what they have made in their previous album "Strange guys", mainstream hard rock recordings with a few prog ingredients brought up by abundant flute melodic lines and new synthesizer sounds. Absolutely not essential, one of their worst.

This evening I was visited by a friend who had put lots of interesting, often rare LP's on CD for me. Here is one surprising 'heavy progressive rock' effort by German band Mythos. Their music on this album (six tracks, running time at about 34 minutes) is a blend of harder edged guitar work and spacey/electronic sounding keyboards featuring some fascinating music (like Flamenco Bay with a dreamy climate and pleasant vintage keyboards) with some hints from Focus (flute sound in Harry chanceless), Hawkwind (raw,propulsive guitar chords and spacey synthesizers) and Jane (fiery electric guitar and strings) but in general it sounds quite unique. For me this album is an entertaining progrock experience (except the boring song Ulysses B. Smart), no more or less, rated with 2,5 stars.

Like a lot of proggers facing the uncertain end of the 1970s the erstwhile Krautrockers of Mythos found a new lease on life in a less complicated musical style. But like many of those same proggers, that sudden burst of energy lasted for only one album, and this wasn't it.

"Concrete City" marked the first time in four tries that the same band had recorded consecutive albums: a smart move by front-man and mainstay Stephan Kaske after the more confident "Strange Guys" in 1977. That album struck a fine balance between creativity and compromise, but this effort sounds tired, like a forced attempt to work through writer's block.

The heavier sound of the previous LP continued here, minus the same enthusiasm. Titles like "Concrete City" and "Neutron Bomb" tried to cop a cynical Post Punk attitude, but the new album failed at Hard Rock in the same way the band in earlier incarnations almost but never quite located the essence of Krautrock. And the attempts at HAWKWIND-like Space Rock (in the title track, and during the smarter instrumental breaks of "Neutron Bomb") were even less inspired, in part because of the somewhat constrained production and mix.

But let's cut the band a little retroactive slack. The big, bad 1980s were within sniffing distance at the time, and for a survivor of the counterculture barricades the aroma couldn't have been very pleasant. Nothing here is truly "Love Beach" bad (or, using another yardstick, "Tormato" awful). But the tepid results should have been a signal to Kaske that he missed an opportunity to quit while he was ahead.