COLDER THAN HELL

This album documents the band's reunion concert performance, and though the event was probably an interesting event of seeing this fabulous 1970's band back on the stage, sadly this record itself wasn't very good album to listen trough. There are some good points here though: Their sound is very vintage, mostly due well preserved electric guitar tone and the old keyboards, and the flute lines of Klaus Gülden are really cool. Also the inclusion of their epic "Weiß Der Teufel" here is a nice gesture, though the performance of it wasn't very exceptional. In that track especially is revealed a one big disappointment for me: The absence of the original drummer Udo Dahman. My all respects to his substitute Mr. Roland Hegel, I don't wish to be impolite towards him, but his more straightforward style isn't as interesting as Udo's chaotic jazzy manners to my ears. There are also some moments here where the playing doesn't work very well, like the fast scale runs on "Schnupfer", which didn't really go through very well. Also I was quite disappointed by the songs on this concert which weren't from their earlier repertoire, as they were really quite mainstream bluesy rock numbers. I have understood, that in the early 1970's after their "Phallobst" album the management wished the band to evolve as German version of Deep Purple. Against their wishes they ventured deeper to psych rock and folk sounds and recorded a demo album "Avalon and On" which didn't please their record company and the group was disbanded. Now, 30 years later, it seems that the band has after all chosen to adapt the direction which they rejected before: The Hammond driven bluesy hard rock tunes here sound very much like Deep Purple? I appreciated the original more artistic line of Rufus Zuphall, and though there are some good parts on this long CD, I really wouldn't recommend it but serious fans of this band, and those who participated these concerts and got good memories from them. The early 1970's recordings of this magnificent band are then another case, which I would like to recommend warmly.