Barclay James Harvest vs The Enid

Anyway, which band do you prefer? Being that these are both relatively lesser known bands I added more options than I usually do(which is saying something). 

BJH never made much of a dent in the US but had a fair bit of UK success and absolutely MASSIVE success in Germany for some reason.  The album "Gone to Earth" was on the German charts for literally years.  Internationally overall they are better known than Strawbs, but Strawbs had more North American success (similar to Gentle Giant as I mentioned) and much more Canadian success, though obviously that's a relatively small market.   It's hard for me to gauge Eloy's success, but it was considerable in Germany, with several chart albums, and a variety of other countries, minimal in NA.   Anyway thanks for including BJH in a poll!  The first song that I heard by them was "Child on the Universe" in the radio in about 1975.  I always wondered if Supertramp's "Crime of the Century" (the song) was influenced by that BJH track, but I think they came out at about the same time.  To me there are some similarities

I'm fairly certain Eloy was Germany's #1 rock band at some point during the '70s. I think they even beat the Scorpions in album sales one year.

In the early 80's too. 

I remember I had a friend who had a housemate who was in the military and stationed in Germany at one point. This was an american guy. I remember seeing his cassette tapes and they were all the typical usual well known rock stuff except for one and that was Eloy. None of the othe stuff was prog either. I think that right there says something. 

according to the German charts, the biggest Eloy album was "Silent Cries and Mighty Echoes".  "Colours" and "Time to Turn" were also big, so most of their chart success was actually in the 1980s.  Perhaps "Ocean" was the one that helped the group hit the bigtime though

agreed, except when I love an album and it was commercially successful...this is so rare that I always point it out.   Strangely enough, with Colours and Time to Turn both charting for some time, it's hard to undertsand how Planets didn't chart being as it was in between them, but it could be that it sold reasonably well over a long period.  

I'm not sure this link will show the Eloy albums but it lets you do a search.  I also copied and pasted the results up to Time to Turn.  After that album most of their albums charted only briefly.  Silent Cries hit the highest spot while Colours was in the chart for the longest.  It's clear that Ocean was their breakthrough.  

https://www.offiziellecharts.de/suche

The American rock press was quite open about their disdain for melodically oriented British rock, almost like they didn't understand it.    If an American group had done what BJH did they would havce been hailed as brilliant by the same press, though.  This negative bias certainly didn't help the cause of BJH