NORDLAND

The beautifully drawn album covers attracted my attention to this record, but sadly the music of it didn't please me very much. The effort is still very sincere. This is quite keyboard-driven and melodic stuff, but some stylistic elements just don't sound very good to my ear. There are few longer suites here, like "House of Three Windows", if more challenging keyboard driven compositions should be a target of special interest. However the vocals are not very well sung, and I wonder if they should have been sung in German instead of English? Anyways, I have learned to like clumsier pronunciations from other continental European vintage rock records, and maybe the screaming won't just work here as good as on Uriah Heep's "Salisbury", heh. Also the cover version of "Eleanor Rigby" is quite silly performance, unlike Vanilla Fudge's version. In addition to this, the composition "Italian Concert in Rock" felt quite hilariously serious, bringing and an association of an angry school teacher to mind bashing the piano staccato's in vein of pre-Haslam Renaissance albums. Song "Da Capo" sounds then more like Black Widow, and the other longer piece "Nordland" has a very imaginative theme. I couldn't help laughing alone to the "Ladoga" sequence though, I was wondering was the song about the agony of the Vikings hard work founding the settlements of Staraja Ladoga? At least there is pain in the vocals which was very infectious. Well, maybe not, "Reality airport" finally brings a disturbed conclusion to this musical piece. The later albums "Eileen" (or "Dreams" and "Dry" were much better albums, and I got impulse from this record to hunt them down. There are certainly some unique and nice elements included on this band's sound, and I believe this debut divides opinions so it is worth checking also, though I would not recommend blind purchasing without careful listening first.