APOLLO

This legendary record started for me with a huge disappointment, and I was very close to throw the CD out of the window immediately. Reasons for my repulse were the horrible vocals singing extremely stupid lyrics, describing the usage of LSD. I'm pretty sure that the whole album was done while tripping and boozing in the rehearsal room. "Now we are doing some really progressive drug music, YEAH!" Also the crappy album covers were surely drawn whilst getting a bad overdose. The raped woman figure probably stands for The Lady of Finland, a figure how Finns usually symbolize our country. The lazy jazzy blues rock of the album opener fades out luckily quite quickly. The following "Lohduton Uni" (Hopeless Dream) has some good percussion arrangements on the impressionist opening theme, and here the vocals are sung with a more proper manner. The music flows tender and ecstatic, and the lyrics are very depressed. This tune first fades out during a solo, and then introduces some silly accordions blowing the final fanfare, not being very striking arrangement in my opinion. "Hyvä Ihminen" (A Good Man) has thoughtful lyrics, and the music is jazzy pop tune with string arrangements and a good middle part for flute. Sadly also this track had to be faded out again. "Ajatuksia" (Thoughts) is then another disgusting sounding song. The singer states that he'll overthrow the parliament, won't use money and so on. This was probably quite strong political criticisms during the year 1970, but today this won't bring anything new or interesting thoughts for me at least. It is good to rebel and think on your own, but the revolutions just bring worse monsters as dictators, excuse my nihilistic attitude to idealistic anarchism dreams. The composition is a lazy bluesy rock rant with interesting psychedelic fuzz guitar and some percussion included, but I'm still quite sure that the first time of listening of this track will also be my final one. Jukka Gustavson was mentioned as a helper on the line-up list of the album, and there are some neat keyboards to be heard here, which might be his playing.

Apollo's drummer Edward Vesala made a very respected career as a jazz musician, and many of his albums were released by the famous ECM label, which might be considered as some sort of merit. There are some hints of his upcoming career in his two solo tracks on this record. "Trimalcion" is first of them, being an instrumental number with great tunes sounding classical Japanese music, and there's a strong presence of percussions. Maybe due the recording time and rock context, this composition of Edward sounds quite much like the early Jade Warrior. The track ends to a short jazz chaos resembling Frank Zappa's 1960's material. "Hideki Tojo 1884-1948" continues the Japanese theme, but the composition is again basic bluesy hard rock tune with bad singing.

"Laulu Ystävälle Varjojen Maassa" (A Song for A Friend in The Land of Shadows) is melancholic and slow psychedelic oriented ballad, being quite beautiful and real highlight on this album. "Valolta Suojattu Sydän" (A Heart Concealed from The Light) is another basic bluesy tune with "thoughtful" lyrics and fadeouts, but next we luckily get another instrumental compostition of Vesala. "Labyrintti" (Labyrinth) is divided in three parts, and it opens with soft guitar and vibraphone tones creating a modern calm space often present on the ECM label's recordings, which the drummer would be doing in the future. The next part is more oppressing atavistic chanting featuring the band too. After this we return to the melodic realm of Edward's percussions. The change from climax to the funeral bells is edited very roughly. After this the album ends to "Pakoon Maailmaa" (Escaping The World) which is another shorter sung track, musically being a calm jazzy pop rock tune with strong lyrics.

This very unbalanced record infested with league of ugly fadeout endings and bellowing vocals should mostly interest serious fans of Edward Vesala, and also those who want to check out rarer Finnish vintage rock records. This record was not released by the famous "Love Records" label, which released a big amount of all Finnish vintage prog, a factor making it bit more obscure along with albums like "Obus" of Nimbus, Haikara's early discs and Eero Koivistoinen's fabulous"Valtakunta".