OLD LOVES DIE HARD

"Old Loves Die Hard" is the fourth studio album of Triumvirat and that was released in 1976. The inspiration did unfortunately and slowly begin to slip away from Triumvirat after their two excellent masterpieces, "Illusions On A Double Dimple", released in 1974 and "Spartacus" released in 1975. It's true that "Old Loves Die Hard" has its fair share of great moments, but the earlier mentioned lack of inspiration was already beginning to show, slight, but consistently.

The line up on the album is Barry Palmer (lead vocals), Jürgen Fritz (Hammond C3 organ, Moog synthesizers, ARP string ensemble, Steinway grand piano, Fender, Wurlitzer and Hohner pianos), Dick Frangenberg (fender bass) and Hans Bathelt (Slingerland percussion). Beyond the band's members, other artists participated on the album, Jane Palmer (backing vocals), Charly Schlimbach (saxophones), Sondra (spoken words) and The Cologne Children Choir.

This line up of the band is substantially different from their previous albums. In the first place and above all, for the first time the group have a lead vocalist, the British singer Barry Palmer, and the trio became now as a quartet. In the second place, and once more, the band changed the bassist. Their previous bassist Helmut Köllen left the band to start a solo career. This situation had happened before when Helmut Köllen replaced Hans Pape, the original Triumvirat's bassist.

"Old Loves Die Hard" has seven tracks. The first track "I Believe" written by Jürgen Fritz and Hans Bathelt is a good song to open the album. This is a very simple but very well elaborated ballad, very powerful and with a very pompous atmosphere. It's a song with inspired symphonic musical arrangements, powerful vocals and it has also great chorus on the background. This is a typical Triumvirat's song. The second track "A Day In A Life" is divided into three parts: "Uranus' Dawn", "Pisces At Noon" and "Panorama Dusk". All three parts were written by Jürgen Fritz. This is a multi-part song with some diversification. It's a very progressive song with great musical and complex arrangements. This is a simple suite instrumental piece of music using piano as lead melody and where Jürgen Fritz shows how great he is in the classical music. This is an amazing track that shows Triumvirat at their best. The song "The History Of Mystery" is divided into two tracks, the part one on track three and the part two on track four. The song was written by Jürgen Fritz, Hans Bathelt and Barry Palmer and was only divided due to the limits of the vinyl format of the records in the 70's. It's a song strongly and heavily influenced by Emerson, Lake & Palmer's sound. This is a song with a great splendour, very bombastic and full of keyboards. It's a very complex and progressive song with an excellent composition and some great arrangements. This is really a brilliant track and it's probably the best musical composition on the whole album. It represents one of the finest musics ever composed by them, too. The fifth track "A Cold Old Worried Lady" written by Jürgen Fritz and Barry Palmer is a beautiful and melodic ballad and where the voice of Barry Palmer sounds very well in a soft range. It isn't as vibrant and catchy as the others previous songs but however it's a very good, pleasant and a solid song. The sixth track "Panic On Fifth Avenue" written by Jürgen Fritz always was one of my favourite songs on the album. It's a very frenetic song from the start to the end and we can see more clearly the performance of Jürgen Fritz in a very close style to Keith Emerson. This is really a memorable musical moment with great individual musical performances by the trio providing 10 minutes of pure symphonic progressive rock. This is the Kaiser Jürgen Fritz at his best on Triumvirat. However and unfortunately, in my opinion, this was the last great epic song of the band. The seventh track is the title track "Old Loves Die Hard". It was written by Jürgen Fritz and ends the album. It's a soft ballad well arranged with a nice melody, excellently sung, and where all the band's members performed very professionally.

My CD remastered edition has also another song, a bonus track, "Take A Break Today". This song was released only as a single and was backed with another song "The Control Of Power", not included here as a bonus track. I will not review it, because usually I don't review bonus tracks. However, I must say one thing about this song. It has nothing to do with the rest of the album. It's an average commercial pop song that unfortunately pronounced what the bad would do in the future music of Triumvirat. Unfortunately, it was a premonition of another fall of a great prog band of the 70's.

Conclusion: "Old Loves Die Hard" is a very good album, indeed. It's true that it isn't as good as "Illusions On A Double Dimple" and "Spartacus", and is more commercial. But, anyway, it still is a great piece of music. The tracks "A Day In A Life", "The History Of Mystery" and "Panic On Fifth Avenue" are absolutely brilliant and represents some of the best compositions made by them. "I Believe", "A Cold Old Worried Lady" and especially "Old Loves Die Hard" are also good songs but they haven't the same quality of the others. Without that reason I would have rated this album with 5 stars, probably. However and unfortunately, this was, in my humble opinion, the last great musical work released by the band.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

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