Album Pick of the Year
03. Night Sun Mournin’ 1972 (Zebra)
Proto-Metal
Kraut metallers that could've set the scene ablaze!
Overview
It’s not often that I put such an unknown album so high up on my listings and this is not because I feel safe with going with the better known stuff either. It’s that I often find from this era, that the better known stuff warrants its lofty position over the lesser known stuff, I mean how many bands at this time were better than Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath or Deep Purple? Answer, not too many, but Trapeze and Mott the Hoople though could give them all a run for their money. So when I pre-listed this Night Sun album for such a high position, I knew they were worth it! Night Sun were a four piece German band from Hamburg and they amazingly only put out one studio album and in hindsight aspects of this album, sound like one of the essential listens from the era. They were influenced by the big three bands mentioned above like so many from the period were, but it’s Deep Purple and probably Uriah Heep that were the most influential on them. Firstly there was vocalist Bruno Schaab’s high-flying Gillanesque style screaming, along with a hint of him sounding like a speeded up Robert Plant on some songs and of course there is organist Knut Rossler playing like Jon Lord or Ken Hensley. So if the listener thinks this album is going to be a run-of-the-mill soundalike of any of those bands, then they’re in for a shock, as this band rip-roar their way through proceedings in their own unique style! The album has all the essential ingredients of heavy metal plus additional extras such as an organ and Night Sun played in a similar vein to the Flower Travellin’ Band, meaning that they sounded like they were completely off their rockers most of the time and nobody else sounded quite like them! At this time, there was a real richness of musical talent coming out of Germany both on the heavy scene and the Krautrock movement, two factors which firmly concreted Germany as the most important musical powerhouse after the UK and the USA. The album was produced by Konrad ‘Conny’ Plank who later go on to produce Kraftwerk, but of course Kraftwerk never sounded anything like Night Sun!
Bruno Schaab- Bass/Vocals
Walter Kirschgassner- Guitar
Knut Rossler- Organ
Ulrich Staut- Drums
Production- Konrad Plank
Album
Plastic Shotgun- A super crazed and frantic sounding intro to the album, that sounds like Deep Purple on speed.
Crazy Woman- A song that represents the band in every aspect, with some great riffing between Walter Kirschgassner on guitar and Knut Rossler on the organ, it’s so good it blows speakers!
Got a Bone of My Own- With its echoing guitar intro that is reminiscent of a spaghetti western soundtrack, the song emerges into a sledgehammer of a song with heavy progressive overtones and all accompanied by Bruno Schaab’s vocals.
Slush Pan Man- Much in the same vein as what has been heard so far and guess what? You now realise that the vocalist is not a native English speaker!
Living With the Dying-Starts off with a spoken intro, before we then move into some great sounding proto-metal meets progressive rock and then topped off with a stunning drum solo by Ulrich Staut.
Come Down- The only slow track on the album that brings the listener down from the craziness of the first five songs, but as expected it picks up the power towards the end before slowing down again.
Blind- Another great song with its kick ass riff which just rolls along, the group make it seem so easy.
Nightmare- Another frantic song with a heavy dosage of organ that Jon Lord would’ve been proud of.
Don’t Start Flying- A quirky heavy closer and this album is so good that you just want to play it all the way through again!
Verdict
Seldom have I ever seen a non-English speaking heavy band of this era put out such a fantastic debut! Often these bands would take some time to find their feet and then take a couple of albums at least to get things right. Fellow German bands the Scorpions and Accept both come to mind here, but Night Sun found it instantly.
Mournin’ along with the Lucifer’s Friend debut, surely ranks as one of the great proto-metal albums ever recorded and it demonstrates that the ‘heavy scene’ in Germany was very much alive and kicking from an innovativation aspect. Night Sun like Lucifer’s Friend before them, were very much influenced by bands like Deep Purple and Uriah Heep and like Lucifer’s Friend, they had the talent to pull off their own original sound and style rather than just giving us a German copy of these bands. So what’s so special about this album and why should anybody listen to it? Quite simply the singing, the guitar riffs and the crazy organ only sound like Night Sun and nobody else really, only the Flower Travellin’ Band came anywhere near them for being manic and weird! The pace and the overall feel of this album, basically sounds like what a metal band should sound like, as long as you take the organ out of the equation. Night Sun basically sound like a band roughly ten years ahead of their time with the originality of their work, sure they took elements out of other bands, but they reshaped those elements in their own image and gave us a 1970s proto-metal classic, with a combo of faster and mid-paced offerings all wrapped up in a heavy vibrant feel! There is the frantic speed of songs like “Plastic Shotgun” “Nightmare” and “Blind” which set the album alight, but it’s the mid-tempo blasters that make this album something special, these are mid-tempo songs which constantly sound like they’re on the verge of going off the rails and running out of control at any time, and can be heard on “Crazy Woman” and “Got a Bone of My Own” and they’re a couple of real heavy muthas, in fact “Got a Bone of My Own” is a blistering song and one of the best from the era! In further terms of metal characteristics, the spoken intro on “Living With the Dying” pre-dates spoken sections on metal songs by a number of years and then treats us to a blazing drum solo near the end! This album though is not just about metal, but sneaks in other things, such as the deliberate sloppiness of “Slush Pan Man“ and then on the slow “Come Down” the band show us that they had mastered the art of whining, long before Radiohead ever came up with the idea! This album is a gem that hardly registered a blip on the radar at the time. But has unsurprisingly gone on to be regarded as a cult-classic from the era, miss it at your peril.