NO ILLUSIONS

By the third album and aswell their swansong Pancake releaseing their best work IMHO, but the public was already lose intrest in the band and in prog music in general. The album released in 1979 named No illusion is aclearly changing again the sound and manner of composing, nor they left the spacey and atmospheric aproach combined with symphonic elements to amore heavy prog choice, who btw is not bad at all , really. The music is something towards hard rock with many mellotron passages, that gives in the end a pleasent heavy prog sound, but also some Eloy moments still are present here and there. Also the vocalist is no other then a female singer Biggi Zmierczak (she remind me of Jerney Kaagman of Earth & Fire fame) the range of her voice is almost the same , who did a great job here, softened the overall atmosphere giving a fairly mellow and pleasent and very good atmosphere as w hole. The best examples whre she shines are Dream Deltaland and Autumn Leaves are pretty damn' prog pieces with great musicianship, also some grandious choruses are present here with stunning arrangemets. The keybords, and more specific mellotron is almost on every piece, on 5 out of 6, that means is a great thing, they used with good measure , when needed and gviving a certain and special album.Otherwise, there are 'lots of mellotron strings on Fire And Rain Songs and No Touch Of Illusions, then more choir on Autumn Leaves ( who btw, the pieces beggins in a pure Eloy tradion, like if is taken from Silet cries and mighty echoes album) and I Try, but despite fairly heavy use the album sounds very solid and to me at least, the best out of the all 3. It's a shame that this is their final release, living aswell a good taste after listening to this album, that this band is unfairly unknown in musical circles, really, this album needs attention together with previous one. In places reminds me of Anyone's Daugher, second album, or later 70's bands form german scene like Minotaurus or Tibet. 4 stars easy for this one, more then good, and the best they ever done, and one of the most underrated albums of late '70's in prog music. Very solid and same time very good release by this obscure band. Recommended

(Recycled from my magazine article on several Garden of Delights re-releases.)

German PANCAKE released three studio albums, each notably different. Weak debut Roxy Elephant (1975) is mostly guitar rock with WISHBONE ASH influence; Out of the Ashes (1977) was an improvement, as the keyboards were added. The vocals are perhaps the weakest link on every album, and the change to a female voice on this third album didn't much help in that matter. Biggi Zmierczak's screeching voice is very untalented to my ears.

The compositions are mostly decent. Slightly messy, synth oriented sound combines the space rock of ELOY and tight Heavy Prog. The couple of more symphonic and the longest tracks, especially 'Autumn Leaves', are easily the best ones, they bring in mind some other German bands of the time such as ANYONE'S DAUGHTER. Half of the six bonus tracks are studio leftovers, half live material, all clearly of lower quality than the album itself. 2½ stars.