EYES / CAN'T GET THROUGH

Welcome aboard the death train, you have passed the point of no return!

I fished this out of a cupboard that holds cd's that I wished I'd never bought and guess what? 10 years later I still regret it. What a bunch of kak.

This is one of the most miserable, derivative middle of the road albums I've ever heard. It's God awful. How on earth this ended up on the otherwise brilliant 'Nurse With Wound' list I'll never know. It's without doubt the worst album I've reviewed on the Prog Archives. It just makes my blood boil with annoyance.

We've got some German guy singing in English over some pretty horrendous raw electric guitar, combined with some real dull bass work and seriously uninspired drums coupled with some atrocious tunes. Gaaaahh! I can't take any more. This is even worse than 'Kalacakra's' abominable 'Crawling To Lhasa'. Easily the worst Krautrock album I've heard.

It's not going back in the cupboard folks, this is going straight in the bin!

"Ballsy" is not a commonly-used term in prog reviews. Even the heaviest of the heavy proggers maintain a certain measured quality, a 'discipline' if you will, that often discourages a purely visceral response -- which, after all, is a hallmark of rock music, and therefore a chief stumbling point for people trying (or not) to 'get' progressive rock.

HAIRY CHAPTER, however, exists on the extreme other side of the equation. If I didn't know going in that these guys were psychedelic Germans, I'd have sworn that I was listening to some good ol' Texas boys who discovered acid while on a football scholarship to Grand Funk U. This is the rare prog that goes as well with cheap beer and tinkering with your muscle car as it does with some sugarcubes and a light show.

Don't get me wrong, it's not great...except that it really is. It's not unique...except that it really is. It's not challenging, but brother, is it challenging. At the heart of the paradox that is HARRY CHAPTER is a willingness among the audience to suspend a certain amount of musical disbelief, perhaps in a completely different direction that one's mind is accustomed to opening.

Predictably, most 'technical' prog fans will hate it and even the more lysergically tolerant psych fans will regard it as an acquired taste. Art rock and RIO fans will probably not even deign to let their multicolored llama urinate on it (upside down, of course). But if you want to get Dazed and Confused Linklater-style, "Can't Get Through" will get your shirt off and your sideburns bouncing like no other.