WEIß DER TEUFEL

RUFUS ZUPHALL has been considered by many to be one of the more important early bands that got lumped into Germany's Krautrock scene in the early 1970s. Founded in Aachen in 1969 by Günter Krause (guitar, vocals), Helmut Lieblang (bass), Klaus Gülden (flute) and Udo Dahmen (drums), this band was decidedly not as interested in taking the separatist journey into the realms of the tripped out sounds that the homeland was undertaking and instead looked towards the English prog scene for inspiration. The band's sound was a mix of prog rock, blues rock, hard rock and progressive folk with a heavy use of flute that got the band compared with Jethro Tull.

While only existing until 1972 before disbanding (a reformation occurred in 1999), RUFUS ZUPHALL released two albums with this debut WEISS DER TEUFEL (translated as "The Devil Knows") in 1970 thus considered one of Germany's pioneering Krautrock bands. One of the band's strategies was to market itself out of its homeland and to appeal more to the neighboring nations of the Netherlands and Belgium with massive exposure at the jazz festival in Belzen, Belgium in 1970 which included other non-jazz artists such as Black Sabbath, Cat Stevens and May Blitz. This move was a good one as it allowed RUFUS ZUPHALL to enjoy a level of success that many German bands would never experience.

When listening to WEISS DER TEUFEL it would be hard to tell at all that this band was German much less lumped into the Krautrock scene as the musical style is firmly based in blues rock with the more complex compositional flair of progressive rock but the main focus was clearly on the flute virtuosity of Klaus Gülden and while the comparisons with Jethro Tull are well-founded, the truth of the matter is that the jamming style of the band wasn't nearly as developed as the exquisite songwriting masterworks of Ian Anderson. The feel of WEISS DER TEUFEL is rather inconsistent and features simple grooves augmented by bluesy guitar licks, both instrumental and vocal segments and long drawn out meandering. The role of the flute was obviously to distract from the otherwise uninspiring compositions and the end result is a decent but not exactly satisfying collection of five tracks.

While the 17 minute long title track which closes the album sounds promising as a true forward thinking prog composition, in reality it's just a ridiculously long blues rock track that takes a few left turns and offers a bit more variation in the Tull inspired flute runs but unfortunately the creative mojo is mostly absent and the Ian Anderson similarities are a bit too similar for my liking. The flute freakout in the middle features a few moments of psychedelic craziness but ultimately it sounds a bit too silly for its own good. For those who want even more of this stuff, the 2004 remaster on the Long Hair label features a few bonus tracks but ultimately they are just live covers of 60s blues rock songs and a testament to RUFUS ZUPHALL looking backwards instead of pioneering in the vein of many Kraut bands. When all is said and done, i don't find this one very satisfying.