BRUCE HAACK

Bruce Haack is one of many interesting personnalities of that late 60's early 70's, and one of the more unknown. This album, about a war in heaven and satan, is a radical departure from what his early albums were. They were records for little kids. I do not know about you, but that is a rather disturbing thought, you have these great little kids albums by this guy that keep them all entertained and happy, then one day in the store you happen to notice a new album by Bruce. Without really looking at the album you just pick it up and buy, then take it back home, start playing it for the kids, then, wait, something is not right here. What the hell is this? An album about satan and war, the next LOGICAL step for someone who was making litle kids albums ( granted, I have listened to those albums and they were pretty strange and i am not sure if when I was a kid, that I would have liked them.)

Anyway, the music on here is actually very interesting with a pretty good storyline of sorts, and the songwriting is very intelligent with a lot of thought put into this record, which comes as a surprise really seeing as little kids albums do not take keyboard solos and very thoughtful songwriting to like by their respective audience.

The songs on at the time must have been like something that came from space or the future, but it has not stood the test of time as well as other electronic bands, even though their were not many bands at the time making music like this, not even TD and Kraftwerk sounded this electronic at the time this was released. It sounds a bit dated now, but i am not the type of person to be bothered by how good something sounds forty or so years after it was released, because it does not take away how good it is in my opinion.

The songs here are very fun and interesting, with some personnal favorites being the opener, Electric To Me Turn, which has some early Vocoder or something similar, and some thumping Moog (?) and higher pitched electronic chirping sounds. This song is very catchy and infectious and is the perfect song to start a album off. It also has some scat vocals, which is pretty interesting. Another favorite is Program Me, which has some tympani sounding drums and some sort of guitar, as well as the ever present electronics.

I have to admit I might be a little biased to strange niche bands and albums, but that just makes finding something as amazing as this all the more better. Highly recommended for anyone looking for some Prog that does not sound like much else out there. A forgotten masterpiece