LABYRINTH

Only two years had lapsed since Rebekka's debut, "Phoenix", when "Labyrinth" was released, but their change in sound is marked, transitioning from a rather unique symphonic rock band, with jazz and folk touches to a power pop prog band admittedly with traces of their German origins and the benefit of a good female singer. If you are familiar with Epidaurus and what happened between "Earthly Paradise" and "Endangered", then you get the idea, but Rebekka did it in a much shorter time frame. While their debut was more of a 1970s album in feel, this one is firmly ensconced in its decade, with very little real progression happening within the songs, just rehashes of themes and moods. This is remarkable considering how the previous album would wander from the mellow to the intense freely and relatively convincingly.

The opener "Kein Mensch mehr da" is one of three sung in German, and it is perhaps the hardest rocking, in a manner of Eloy's Metromania which was released around the same time, but it is ultimately unconvincing, in contrast to two other uptempo tracks, "Out of Sight", which finds a nice groove and features impressive vocalizations by Marion Weldert, and the rollicking "Lass mich aus". "Gipsy's Campsite" is probably the most reminiscent of the Phoenix album, and would not be out of place there. In terms of ballads, which is most of the album really, they run from the mundane and interminable, "Bygone Song" and "Gutes Nachtlied" closing pair, to the barely passable pure pop of "No More to Say", to the very pleasant "Harvest". which reminds me of a cross between Relf's and Haslam's Renaissance, and features a short but sweet flute-lead guitar transition before the chorus reprises.

While definitely a small p prog rock album, "Labyrinth" is decent for its era, and has a reasonable ratio of good tunes to clunkers. It's really 2.5 stars, rounded down because the only really distinct feature of this band in 1984 was the gender of its talented singer, and prog bands should show a little more pizzazz than that.

I don't know much about this band, but it seems likely that guitarist Martin Schneider- Weldert had some sort of relationship with band singer Marion Weldert. The fact he's gone on this, the band's second and final album, probably means something happened to that relationship. Maybe not, and don't quote me but it makes sense.

The band has also changed labels, from Heute to Ohrwurm Records, which I also don't know much about but a quick check tells me they were issuing mostly electronica music at the time. Neither label appears to have been very big, and frankly this band doesn't make sense embedded in either label's catalog. In any case there seems to have been a very conscious shift away from progressive music between the band's first and second albums. Makes sense given the times (mid-80s).

Singer Marion Weldert is much more prominent on this record than the first, and she has also switched to singing in English rather than her native German. The music is also considerably more commercial than the first record with shorter tracks more vocally focused, simple rhythms and plenty of guitar arpeggios on songs like "Out of Sight" and "Gipsy's Campsite". Drummer Jürgen Schiaschter has also replaced Christoph Imler and his style is pure arena-rock. The guitar and drum work on songs like "Lass Mich Aus" are in more of the Neue Deutsche Welle style than the more symphonic structures on the band's debut record. There's also the obligatory rock ballad ("No More to Say"), a languid and partially acoustic folksy number ("Harvest") that does sound a bit like the original band, and a bombasticly spacious arena rock number with "Bygone Song".

The second half of the album is closer to progressive rock than the first, but honestly this is not really any more progressive or symphonic than most of the rest of the music being pushed out in the early and mid eighties. The one bright spot comes from Peter Laubmeier's piano, which is as exquisite and beautiful here as on the first record, particularly on "Gutes Nachtlied" where Weldert reverts to German for the vocal parts.

This album has never been reissued on CD as far as I know, and it isn't all that easy to find today. There's probably good reason why the new generation of progressive labels have avoided remastering and re-releasing it, mostly because it really isn't all that great of an album. The music is pretty decent, but nothing that a hundred other bands weren't already doing at the time.

I can't say as this record is worth seeking out unless you are a real fan of the band or just a curious collector with deep pockets. That said, the music is decent enough that two stars seems to be an undeserved insult, so in consideration of the relative standards of the time period in which it was recorded I'll go with three stars, but only a mild recommendation.

peace