BRANDUNG

Sensing that their growing audience might throw away their sleeping pills if they produced another "Sommerabende", NOVALIS recruited the more virile Fred Mühlböck on vocals and sat on a hot tin roof before entering the studio to record "Brandung", which became their biggest selling album ever. It shows that some people will buy anything.

Apart from the first two cuts, the rocking hit "Irgendwo, Irgendwahn" and the delicate acoustic ballad "Wenn nicht mehr zahlen und figuren", not much here sticks. It's just angst ridden AOR prog with too many rough edges as sure as "Sommerabende" had no edge at all. Even the 16 minute suite fails to rivet, so plus ca change....

Admittedly, to this point Novalis' peaks were none too high and valleys not overly steep, but "Brandung" was their weakest effort of the 1970s by a fair margin. I think I'll surf this one out.