MADE IN GERMANY

In the previous years, Amon Düül II had changed from dazzling acid Kraut to mainstream art-rock. just like its predecessors this is an album showing a band that lost its spirit. The conceptual idea behind the album was fabricated by producer Jorgen S Korduletsch and takes precedence over the music. The band has a hard time showing and enthusiasm for it, and just as on Hi-Jack they are largely assisted by a battalion of session musicians.

The album does some sort of twisted take on German history, so we get lots of lyrics, humor, banter, silly voices and so on. Various musical styles are used and at best they have a kind of space-rock quality to them, reminding in places to the Captain Lockheed album from Hawkwind's Rob Calvert. When the songs are upbeat they sometimes have a mild garage-rock quality to them (such as Wilhelm Wilhelm), but such occasions are rare. Lots of the material consists of 60s beat-pop and tedious balladry with corny string arrangements, cheesy saxes and other producer's tricks.

As an uninterrupted 70 minutes of material this is a real disappointment. One would expect at least to find a decent average quality from such endeavor, and preferably we would love a couple of real standouts to figure as landmarks through the long journey. Both conditions are not met here. And that is without mentioning the horrid orchestral opening of the album and the formulaic self-parody of La Krautoma.

From what I've read, the worst was yet to come for Amon Düül II, but this one is as deep as I'm willing to sink along with them. The band realized they were falling apart and disregard this album very much, but they were unable to reverse the downward trend, which must have been really frustrating given their extraordinary talents.