I know what I like: Trollheart's History of Progressive Rock and Progressive Metal

Trollheart · 03-17-2022, 10:36 AM

How did you get in here? Isn't that TRO still in effect? Here...

Queen Boo · 03-17-2022, 09:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Batlord

Saying you like prog but not Magma is like admitting to the world that you've written original series Star Trek fan fiction.

What's wrong with writing original series Star Trek fan fiction?

I love Magma but they're certainly not a band for everyone.

I have a feeling Trollheart won't be too fond of Henry Cow or any of the Rock in Opposition stuff, in terms of accessibility it's prog rock on Nightmare Mode.

Trollheart · 03-17-2022, 10:04 PM

I have my therapy session booked in advance...

Still, hope springs eternal. There have been some artists here I feared exploring who have turned out not to be as bad as I feared. Miracles occasionally happen. I heard Batty once went out with a girl. Could be just one of those urban legends though. Maybe I'm being too gullible.

The Batlord · 03-18-2022, 02:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Queen Boo

What's wrong with writing original series Star Trek fan fiction?

The shipping opportunities are weak unless you just want slash fics.

Queen Boo · 03-18-2022, 02:45 AM

Jeez have you never heard of gender swapping before?

You have a weak imagination son.

The Batlord · 03-18-2022, 05:55 AM

Tbh even just for slash stuff the characters are too stoic for fan fiction. There's a reason that statistically every fan fiction is either Harry Potter or Naruto.

Trollheart · 03-18-2022, 12:57 PM

Or Buffy

The Batlord · 03-18-2022, 01:32 PM

She's well behind either.

Trollheart · 03-18-2022, 02:08 PM

I'd be well if I was behind her.

Trollheart · 02-27-2023, 10:04 AM

Once again, much time has passed. I've been busy with other projects, and to be honest I wasn't sure I'd get back to this in the first half of this year, but it's been almost a year now since I last wrote anything in this history, so I've made an effort to get to the end of 1971.

And I thought I'd get things started with this.

Yeah, another band who had just the one album in their career. Why was that?

Album title: Ikarus
Artist: Ikarus
Nationality: German
Label: Plus 4 Records
Chronology: Debut and only
Grade: C
PA Rating: 3.86 (Note: From this on, I’m going to include the rating the album received on Prog Archives, shown as PA Rating)
The Trollheart Factor: 0
Tracklisting: Eclipse: a) Skyscrapers b) Sooner or Later/ Mesentery/ The Raven (including Theme for James Marshall)/ Early Bell’s Voice
Comments: What can I find out about these guys? Well, at least, despite being German, they weren’t Krautrock, which is something. Not that every German prog band was, of course - remember Eloy? But overall, given the sub-genre name, it stands to good reason that if you were born in Berlin, Bonn, Bavaria or, um, some other German city beginning with B - Bad something or other, maybe? Bremen? Hey yeah, Bremen works. Well, anyway, if you were German and wanted to play prog rock the larger percentage of artists seemed to have gone for Krautrock as their prog of choice. These guys didn’t. Maybe that’s a reason why they didn’t last. Or maybe they were just crap. Or badly managed. Or maybe they were great, and it will remain one of music’s great mysteries why they didn’t flourish.

I won’t find out, as there’s little to no information on them, but at least I can make some sort of determination based on their music, as to whether or not they deserved to have more than the one album, which is all they had. One album. Okay, well when PA calls their one and only effort “solid, but not essential”, and awards it a paltry - 3.86? That’s not so bad. And equates on the site to “Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection.” Hmm. Mixed messages here. Time to make up my own mind.

Well at least they have the requisite suite, and perhaps rather unwisely put it at the beginning, so we get fifteen minutes of “Eclipse”, which is broken up into two sections, the first of which, “Skyscrapers”, sounds a bit more hard or maybe psych rock to me but we’ll see. Some good throaty organ breaking in, and what sounds like a harmonica, which is relatively unusual in prog. Fair bit of brass here - flute, clarinet, sax - which possibly is what led the reviewer on PA to liken them to Van der Graaf. Don’t really see it myself, not yet. Nice little acoustic guitar passage now slowing things down, and it sounds like there’s some Hammond in there too. The two parts of the suite are not timed, so I have no idea when one ends and the other begins; if it’s obvious I’ll let you know. Sounds more like Supertramp’s debut album to me now; lot of organ and thick bass. Quite nice really.

Good to see they sang in English, which is certainly a help. Big extended instrumental now and I would have to say this is pretty damn fine so far. Still, the production drops - or at least the level does, drastically, on “Mesentery” (huh?) though it’s only for less than a minute before it gets sorted out and then we have a sort of Queen-style track running on a nice guitar line, it’s pretty cool. “The Raven” then has a very familiar riff in it - oh it comes from Waits’ “Potter’s Field”. Yeah, well probably none of you know that. Well, maybe one or two. I wonder if this is an instrumental? Hardly: it’s the second-longest track at just shy of twelve minutes! Strangely enough, it stops dead after about three minutes, fooling you into thinking the next one is a new track, but it’s not, it’s all part of the one, and the same motif runs through this part too. And here come the vocals.

Oh it’s actually The Raven, the Edgar Allan Poe poem, which the singer recites here against the music. Not terribly audibly it has to be said, but the idea is not bad. The Alan Parsons Project did something similar five years later, but used a vocoder and I’m pretty sure it was very much an abridged version. This seems like it might be complete - no, they’ve jumped to the end, too. Well, who’s going to include the entire thing? I can’t honestly say it works: the idea of the lyric, as such, being so hard to make out, whether intentional or not, robs it of its impact, for me anyway. The music is good, but overall I think this has to be considered a failure. Pity. The album then ends on “Early Bell’s Voice”, which I think is an instrumental on mostly organ and piano. Very nice. Actually, it’s not an instrumental but it is a cool little closer.

I’d have to say on balance this is a very good album, and should really have pointed the way to greater things for Ikarus, but I suppose in the same way as many really good bands just failed to make it through the cluster of new guns pushing to establish themselves in the NWOBHM, and also given that they were living in a country which, at that time, was not exactly known for anything in the line of progressive rock other than Krautrock (Eloy being the exception), maybe they just were in the wrong place at the wrong time? In any case, you know I’m going to say it, so I will. Seems their wings melted and they came crashing down, but I believe that rather than being a process of musical natural selection, here, the lack of success for Ikarus can be seen as something of a tragedy, and a case of what might have been.

Favourite track(s): Pretty much everything really
Least favourite track(s):
Personal Rating: 4.50
Legacy Rating: 1.00
Final Rating: 2.50

03-17-2022, 10:36 AM	#271 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,970	How did you get in here? Isn't that TRO still in effect? Here... __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

03-17-2022, 10:04 PM	#273 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,970	I have my therapy session booked in advance... Still, hope springs eternal. There have been some artists here I feared exploring who have turned out not to be as bad as I feared. Miracles occasionally happen. I heard Batty once went out with a girl. Could be just one of those urban legends though. Maybe I'm being too gullible. __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

03-18-2022, 12:57 PM	#277 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,970	Or Buffy __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

03-18-2022, 02:08 PM	#279 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,970	I'd be well if I was behind her. __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

02-27-2023, 10:04 AM	#280 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,970	Once again, much time has passed. I've been busy with other projects, and to be honest I wasn't sure I'd get back to this in the first half of this year, but it's been almost a year now since I last wrote anything in this history, so I've made an effort to get to the end of 1971. And I thought I'd get things started with this. Yeah, another band who had just the one album in their career. Why was that? Album title: Ikarus Artist: Ikarus Nationality: German Label: Plus 4 Records Chronology: Debut and only Grade: C PA Rating: 3.86 (Note: From this on, I’m going to include the rating the album received on Prog Archives, shown as PA Rating) The Trollheart Factor: 0 Tracklisting: Eclipse: a) Skyscrapers b) Sooner or Later/ Mesentery/ The Raven (including Theme for James Marshall)/ Early Bell’s Voice Comments: What can I find out about these guys? Well, at least, despite being German, they weren’t Krautrock, which is something. Not that every German prog band was, of course - remember Eloy? But overall, given the sub-genre name, it stands to good reason that if you were born in Berlin, Bonn, Bavaria or, um, some other German city beginning with B - Bad something or other, maybe? Bremen? Hey yeah, Bremen works. Well, anyway, if you were German and wanted to play prog rock the larger percentage of artists seemed to have gone for Krautrock as their prog of choice. These guys didn’t. Maybe that’s a reason why they didn’t last. Or maybe they were just crap. Or badly managed. Or maybe they were great, and it will remain one of music’s great mysteries why they didn’t flourish. I won’t find out, as there’s little to no information on them, but at least I can make some sort of determination based on their music, as to whether or not they deserved to have more than the one album, which is all they had. One album. Okay, well when PA calls their one and only effort “solid, but not essential”, and awards it a paltry - 3.86? That’s not so bad. And equates on the site to “Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection.” Hmm. Mixed messages here. Time to make up my own mind. Well at least they have the requisite suite, and perhaps rather unwisely put it at the beginning, so we get fifteen minutes of “Eclipse”, which is broken up into two sections, the first of which, “Skyscrapers”, sounds a bit more hard or maybe psych rock to me but we’ll see. Some good throaty organ breaking in, and what sounds like a harmonica, which is relatively unusual in prog. Fair bit of brass here - flute, clarinet, sax - which possibly is what led the reviewer on PA to liken them to Van der Graaf. Don’t really see it myself, not yet. Nice little acoustic guitar passage now slowing things down, and it sounds like there’s some Hammond in there too. The two parts of the suite are not timed, so I have no idea when one ends and the other begins; if it’s obvious I’ll let you know. Sounds more like Supertramp’s debut album to me now; lot of organ and thick bass. Quite nice really. Good to see they sang in English, which is certainly a help. Big extended instrumental now and I would have to say this is pretty damn fine so far. Still, the production drops - or at least the level does, drastically, on “Mesentery” (huh?) though it’s only for less than a minute before it gets sorted out and then we have a sort of Queen-style track running on a nice guitar line, it’s pretty cool. “The Raven” then has a very familiar riff in it - oh it comes from Waits’ “Potter’s Field”. Yeah, well probably none of you know that. Well, maybe one or two. I wonder if this is an instrumental? Hardly: it’s the second-longest track at just shy of twelve minutes! Strangely enough, it stops dead after about three minutes, fooling you into thinking the next one is a new track, but it’s not, it’s all part of the one, and the same motif runs through this part too. And here come the vocals. Oh it’s actually The Raven, the Edgar Allan Poe poem, which the singer recites here against the music. Not terribly audibly it has to be said, but the idea is not bad. The Alan Parsons Project did something similar five years later, but used a vocoder and I’m pretty sure it was very much an abridged version. This seems like it might be complete - no, they’ve jumped to the end, too. Well, who’s going to include the entire thing? I can’t honestly say it works: the idea of the lyric, as such, being so hard to make out, whether intentional or not, robs it of its impact, for me anyway. The music is good, but overall I think this has to be considered a failure. Pity. The album then ends on “Early Bell’s Voice”, which I think is an instrumental on mostly organ and piano. Very nice. Actually, it’s not an instrumental but it is a cool little closer. I’d have to say on balance this is a very good album, and should really have pointed the way to greater things for Ikarus, but I suppose in the same way as many really good bands just failed to make it through the cluster of new guns pushing to establish themselves in the NWOBHM, and also given that they were living in a country which, at that time, was not exactly known for anything in the line of progressive rock other than Krautrock (Eloy being the exception), maybe they just were in the wrong place at the wrong time? In any case, you know I’m going to say it, so I will. Seems their wings melted and they came crashing down, but I believe that rather than being a process of musical natural selection, here, the lack of success for Ikarus can be seen as something of a tragedy, and a case of what might have been. Favourite track(s): Pretty much everything really Least favourite track(s): Personal Rating: 4.50 Legacy Rating: 1.00 Final Rating: 2.50 __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018