VIRUS

My least favourite track is "Rock 'N' Roll", a very bluesy tune with vocals and lots of organ and drums. My favourites are the last two songs. "King Heroin" picks up before 1 1/2 minutes as the sax joins in. Nice bass too. The guitar joins in a minute later. They just jam here for a considerable amount of time. Just a great sound. "Woods Fun" has a nice heavy sound as the sax comes in. Organ after 2 1/2 minutes. This is the longest track at over 10 minutes and there's some really good jamming going on here. Good song.

So a pretty good live record but i'll stick to their studio albums.

Despite being German and existing in the early seventies, this is more modern hard rock than it is progressive or Krautrock. There aren’t any grandiose lyrical themes or complicated arrangements, but there is an abundance of horns (mostly saxophone) which wasn’t particularly mainstream in that period.

The sound quality is pretty good for a live album, although the Garden of Delights reissue is surely cleaned up from the original vinyl (which I have not had the pleasure to hear, but is a reasonable assumption anyway). The band manages to keep up a high level of energy throughout, and there aren’t any mellow tracks. The keyboardist Jörg-Dieter Krahe sounds a bit like Jon Lord with a dose of acid under his tongue, and Wolfgang Rieke’s drumming isn’t overly ornate but he is quite intense at times.

The title track has some great guitar licks all through the song, including an extended instrumental piece. The band has a tendency to lay into longish jams all through the album, not surprising considering the times and the fact that they were in stage at the time. I would be interested to hear one of their studio albums in comparison, but as yet haven’t had the chance.

A few of the tracks here aren’t much more than heavy rock with little if anything progressive about them, “Rock 'n Roll”, “King Heroin” and “Settle Down” in particular. The last of these sounds a bit like the heavier parts of the first couple of Chicago albums, mostly thanks to the saxophone and keyboards.

The album closes with another jam session, the ten-minute long “Woods Fun” with extended keyboard funkiness and free-form jazzy saxophone. This must have been a crowd pleaser on a dark summer evening under the skies (I’m imaging this was the setting, but who knows…).

I suppose these guys are forgotten for a reason, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend this album for someone trying to discover progressive music. But the tunes are all originals, the sonic quality of the music is quite good, even for 1973, and folks who get into long jamming heavy rock will probably dig this album a fair bit. Three solid stars for sure, and recommended mostly to fans of bands like Uriah Heep, Cactus, Colosseum – stuff like that.

peace

So don't expect very original music. What you get is great heavy psychedelic rock played by accomplished musicians. The vocals aren't very good, but on the other hand there is not much singing on this album anyway. An enjoyable album.

In the early 90's race to release rare German from the early 70's, three labels raged on: Repertoire (with their big means, they managed most of Phillips and subsidiary Vertigo and much more outside the country), Ohrwaschl (who released the legendary Ohr label as well as the other legendary label Kuckuck) and Second Battle, who always seemed to get the second choice material (getting stuck with Light Of Darkness, King Ping Meh and Gift. Lately of course, Garden Of Delights have been taking most of the cake, serving us a bunch of goodies (a few less ripe though), but when comparing labels specializing into German re-issues, Second Battle always seems to get the lesser ones.

This quintet recorded just two albums, this debut by excellent producer Konrad Plank in Munich - where so much of Germany's "spacier" rock was being recorded. You might want to think of a cross of Floyd (for the heavy freak-out bouts) with some early 70's UK heavy progressive between Purple (Jon Lord for the organs) and early Sabbath (Geezer Butler on bass), or Raw Material.

The lenghty opener is a good 12-min+ improvisation based on the Stones' Paint It Black (a fave of mine and of many progheads as this was one of their most covered tracks), but this is maybe one of the best homage ever done to the track (along with metalheads Anvil and fellow early proggers Jody Grind). Endless Game (also above the 12-min mark) starts very slowly with great organs underlined by a superb and delicate guitar, being replaced gradually by a flute and bass riffs and then heavy freaking passages not far away from Floyd (around atom Heart Mother), simply great if not completely original, though!! Burning Candle is however a much shorter and harder track and can be thought of Alvin Lee jamming with Ten Years After. The 10-min+ Hungry Looser is again sensibly harder rocking, until the song breaks into a bluesy piano, and it could be the low point in the album, but hardly worth pushing the SKIP button on your remote control. The album closes on a 7-min+ psych deliria bringing you gladly back to the first few tracks. This heavyly Floyd-influenced track is simply awesome and much recommended if you are about to spark a Jamaican cigar.

They will then move to the ultra small (and now very collectible) label Pilz, but their second album (with only two original remaining members) will be a far cry from the great haunting atmosphere dominating this one. But with Virus, they struck a pretty good one, with this heavy psychedelic group specializing in lenghty space rock tracks (sometimes approaching Floyd at its spaciest) and dreamy voyage around our atmosphere. Yes, it was about time that Second Battle actually got the better release, leaving Ohrwaschl the worse one. Yes it was about time Second Battle actually released a superb album inn their re-issue series. Hardly groundbreaking but quite enjoyable.