CODENAME WILDGEESE (OST)

An ELOY soundtrack? Without Frank?

Deceiving... There is not much of ELOY's touch here, not even the space sci-fi rock approach they tried to develop in the mid 80's. One of the reason is that the band broke up after the former album, "Metromania", and three members recorded this soundtrack without Frank Bornemann under ELOY's name. The result is... pretty dated and uninspired. Synth pop rock put in short and mainly instrumental tracks. The (few) songs which save the record are often electronic.

The disc opens with "The Patrol", which first notes makes you wonder if it is truly music from ELOY you are listening to. The tune is poor and quickly boring. Same goes for "Hong Kong Theme I". "Hit And Run" is one the most enjoyable piece of the soundtrack with its futuristic and laser sound. Then comes the only sung moment of the disc, "Queen Of Rock'n'Roll", which is just a basic hair pop-metal song. "Destiny", "Deadlock" and "A Long Goodbye" work ok as ambient and mysterious tunes, whereas "Discovery", "Juke Box", "Cha-Shoen" and "On the Edge" are a bit lazy and repetitive. The end does not get better.

"Codename Wildgeese" is the only ELOY release without its leader Frank Bornemann and easily the worst. Don't expect enchanting melodies, guitar solos, symphonic evolutions or space metal here. The only interests are some electro ambient short pieces. The rest just ressembles a flat action movie soundtrack from the 80's.

Absolutely for completionists only... but I would say higher than one star. This is definitely a hard album to get your hands on which is kind of the fun in having it. With one of the cheesiest album covers the world has ever seen, this "Eloy" album has more in common with the video game Double Dragon than with, let's say, Metromania. However, I'm not saying that is a bad thing. The album actually has an interesting mood which, despite its very obvious soundtracky nature, is unique in the sense that it is the ONLY record in my collection that sounds like a standard 80's action movie soundtrack.

Sure, in the grand universe of prog, this album is very, very weak. If this was the direction the band wanted to go in, then it is obvious why Frank Bornemann split. Still, even on their worst day, the remaining members of Eloy still pull off a very interesting, yet short, piece of music here.

My advise is, if you've gone as far to consider acquiring this record, do so after you've checked out most of Eloy's other material, and do NOT consider this album at all representational of the Eloy sound. Also, do not break the bank on this. Only go for it if its cheap, because this is a really cheap sounding album.

Codename Eloy

As other reviewers have pointed out, this is not really an Eloy album proper despite carrying that name. This is an almost completely instrumental movie soundtrack to an obscure film and the line-up is severely truncated. Frank Bornemann is not even here and hence none of his vocals and guitars that otherwise define the Eloy sound. This music has indeed very little to do with Eloy as we know them or with Prog of any kind for that matter. What we have here is much more towards pure electronic music than to the usual hard edged, spacy Prog Rock of Eloy's other albums. I am often reminded of Larry Fast's Synergy while hearing these largely electronic tunes. As such, they are decent if unoffensive. The sole exception is Queen Of Rock 'n' Roll, an awful Rock 'n' Roll number that is totally out of place on this album. This is the only track that features vocals.

I would say that this album is strictly for hard core Eloy fans and completionists

Pretty bogus, if you ask me, and it's not even that particularly good. This is a soundtrack to some war flick starring Ernest Borgnine called Codename: Wildgeese, coming out roughly the same time Borgnine was busy with the Airwolf TV series playing Dominique Santini. This isn't Eloy, but three ex-Eloy members Hannes Arkona, Hannes Folbert, and Klaus-Peter Matziol with Jan Nemec. This is basically instrumental incidental music that might function fine in the film (I have little desire to watch the movie, because although I grew up in the 1980s and watched Airwolf as a youth, I couldn't stand Ernest Borgnine) but try actually listening to it. It's a bit like the synthy parts of Metromania, but at least with that album you get real songs and of course Frank Bornemann's input, making that a true legitimate Eloy album. I think this disaster could have easily been avoided if it credited as a Hannes Arkona & Hannes Folberth album. That's basically what it is, and even then, the music quality wouldn't be any better. The music on Codename: Wildgeese, from what I remembered sounded like half-sketched ideas rather than full-on songs. I even get the feeling both of the Hannes seems like without Frank Bornemann as their guidance, they're sunk. Also notice that EMI Records (Harvest being a subsidiary of EMI) had nothing to do with this, released on some small Swiss label called Milan. If you never owned this, really, you're not missing much. Stick with the real Eloy albums.

A somewhat dispensable accompaniment to a wholly dispensable film, "Codename Wildgeese" sounds even less like a shoot up em soundtrack than it does like an ELOY album. In fact, while it virtually lacks a rock aspect other than one dreadful vocal number ("Queen of Rock and Roll") and a serviceable instrumental ("Juke-Box"), the synth sounds are not entirely removed from those being made on the contemporaneous ELOY issues of the day, neither of which I would ever consider as peak period for this monster German symphonic group. What it lacks is any attempt at actual composition, which perhaps might have to do with Frank Bornemann's absenteeism.

Codename Wildgeese is mostly an amalgamation of short synth pieces that at their worst approach supermarket new age music and at their best, such as in "On the Edge", recall GOBLIN. "Patrol" , "Discovery" and the Hong Kong themes are competent if routine instrumentals that could easily be fillers on ELOY or PETE BARDENS albums, which isn't the worst idea, while "A Long Goodbye" is somewhat more engaging with faux synths that are reminiscent of....I'm drawing a blank. For the rest, ick. Still much better than the film I'd wager.

I can't really award this 3 stars but it's not far off 2.5 to be honest, and much better than I expected. But what eventually tips the scales is that it's really for fans like me who have every other ELOY studio album and are fed up with wondering how bad this could be. Codename mediocre.