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Gomorrha - Trauma CD (album) cover

TRAUMA

Gomorrha

Heavy Prog


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hdfisch
PROG REVIEWER
2 stars The band Gomorrha based in Cologne in 1969 has been influenced initially strongly by 60's beat music and the original version of this album here (which is added up as bonus on the CD re-release) is kept basically in this style using German lyrics. Since especially their vocals in native language wasn't that much appreciated on concerts the band decided to discard the complete recordings and to do new ones with singing in English adding a much stronger psyche and bluesey touch to the songs. Those are mainly dominated by guitar and especially on the title track which is the longest and certainly most interesting one plenty of solos can be found. Keyboards have been used rather sparsely but then highly efficient and in a freaky and psychedelic vein. Not everything on this work here can be considered as Prog since the rest of the songs are more or less blues-tinged psyche rock. Although being not really that much impressing (at least to me) this album is nonetheless a quite decent debut and an interesting collector's item for all fans of early Krautrock.
Report this review (#88109)
Posted Thursday, August 24, 2006 | Review Permalink
Mellotron Storm
PROG REVIEWER
2 stars The highlight of this album is the cover art that opens up revealing a woman smoking a joint that has the faces the the band members on it. It looks pretty cool.This album is rated fairly highly on another site and I just don't get it at all. GOMORRAH were a German band from the late sixties and early seventies.This isn't Krautrock and it really lacks dynamics and ideas.To be honest it's really a poor album as Hdfisch has already noted in his review.

"Journey" has this beat with repetitive guitar melodies as reserved vocals join in.This is late sixties sounding. "Trauma" is the best track by far clocking in at over 13 minutes it at least has that Krautrock spirit. It's uninspired at first but then the guitar starts to improvise and turns more aggressive 4 1/2 minutes in. Organ to the fore after 9 1/2 minutes. "Yesterday" builds as drums, guitar then organ joins in.Vocals around a minute. "Lola" opens with drums as some fuzzy guitar leads then organ arrives and leads.The guitar is back.Vocals after 1 1/2 minutes as it settles back.

"Dead Land" is simply not very good at all. "Summer" is better with the guitar, bass and drums standing out. Organ follows then vocals. "Rainbowlight" is really the only other track other than "Trauma" that I like. "Dance Of Circles" has some flute late but it's another bad tune. "Firehands" is energetic early on but it goes downhill when the vocals join in.

2 stars it is. Fans or collectors only.

Report this review (#424797)
Posted Wednesday, March 30, 2011 | Review Permalink
Sagichim
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR
Honorary Collaborator
2 stars Gomorrha's debut album released in 1971, after they were completely dissatisfied with the recording of what was supposed to be their debut album. Instead they shaped up the songs and rerecorded them, instead of the german lyrics which apparently did not work, they released the album with english vocals. The album consists of 8 short songs and one 13 minute song, 'Trauma', this song is so out of place, it doesn't have the slightest resemblance to the rest of the album, while the majority of the album is in the vein of typical 60's beat psych songs, trauma is a prog beast which sees the band set their eyes towards something more ambitious than the rest of the material.

The music is mainly some hard edged 60's rocky tunes with a slight psych atmosphere around it, really arriving a few years late to this scene, and not presenting us with anything new, since this all sounds like a 1967/8 recording, not sure why the band recorded those songs since this kind of music was clearly gone by that time, and had evolved to a much more mature approach. The band's sound is lying heavily on guitars which include a few moments of fiery solos and other hard edged guitar sounds, but this is hardly enough to satisfy this progressive listener. What saves this album from being a total embarrassment is of course the album's title song, Trauma, clocking at 13 minutes, this piece is far from being a prog masterpiece but it still quite nice to listen to, it is actually a big jam, the music is psychedelic, and after a nice intro the singer is going aside and guitars starts to solo which leads them to the next part, feedback and distortion noises, keys are also added which is nice, they solo a bit and end this song, overall very good. If the album would continue in this vein, this could have been one of the coolest jams out there.

Nothing to be excited by, but it is nice to have if you are a completionist or a collector, better going to their next album, which showed a much more elaborated writing and playing. The CD version contains the german sung version as well, which is even worse than the english version, recording quality is rough and the arrangements are not good. Trauma is saving this album from being a 1 star. Avoid.

Report this review (#769238)
Posted Monday, June 11, 2012 | Review Permalink

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