CARDEILHAC

This is one of lost bands who only produced one album and after the album was released no one knew where the band or its members were going. The music is more on straight classic rock style in the vein of Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Grand Funk Railroad or Leslie Wes's Mountain. I'm sure that my friends who like rock oldies would favor this band.

The opening track "Pick Up Your Gun" is a straight rocker with a lot of Hammond organ work and it would definitely favor those classic rock lovers. "Everybody" is in similar vein but the music is much more dynamic with excellent electric guitar rhythm work. Vocal quality is excellent. The structure is not like straight rock music as it has many curved melodies with nice breaks demonstrating guitar and guitar solos. "Pushers Dwell" reminds me to Grand Funk Railroad's music with stunning electric guitar fills and solo.

The band tries to touch the prog style through attractive Hammond organ and guitar opening of "Sadness". The style is much mellower than previous tracks but it has a great classic rock nuance. "She Don't Care" continues the style of oldies rock music with a good combination of bass playing, guitar and organ. "Neutral" is probably the most proggy tune with excellent combination of organ and guitar fills in some bluesy and jazzy styles. The guitar fills are really good.

Overall, it's a good album of vintage straight hard rock with some prog touches. Recording quality is not good, however, it represents the 70's sound and it could be a plus point. Keep on proggin' ..!

Peace on earth and mercy mild - GW

2.5 stars really!!

Sole album from this proto-prog Swiss group, which came with a standard prog quartet plus a singer. Along with the bluesier Krokodil, Cardeilhac was one of the first Swiss progressive groups. From the looks of their names, they seem to be from the Latin part of the country but the group's name would hint a more Alemanic Swiss origin.

If you can picture The Nice or ELP with a heavy guitar (but not like The Nice's debut with O'List), you might get a good idea of what they sound like (and their drummer is called Balmer ;-), even if the strange alien B&W artwork is a bit misleading about the album's content. You can also think of Quartemass with a guitar (or for that matter many organ- driven hr'ad rock of the era), but in the end, it is keyboardist André Locher that gets the most exposure, and he's clearly the better musician in this group. Although the album is off to a poor start (the hard Pick Up Your Gun), it reaches fairly quickly cruising speed with a bunch of good tracks (but with perfectible vocals), but always remain fairly unrefined production-wise.

Not always fascinating (especially in the Emersonian moments), and with a few weaker tracks (the opening track and Nightmare come to mind), Cardeilhac remains acceptable for discerning fans to the two afore-mentioned groups. But I doubt you will be spinning this album often.