Katagory V - Present Day (2001)

This four song EP from the Utah based Katagory V presents the band as a surprisingly solid power metal combo with a throwback feel.  That is, chugging guitars, soaring vocals, harmonized guitar melodies complete with a rough-around-the-edges production value that harkens back to prime 80s metal.  Bands that come to mind range from early Fates Warning and Queensryche, and particularly the mighty Iron Maiden, and the whole thing just has character written all over it. One could probably ask for a little more originality, but that's not really the point is it?  Thankfully, the group is more than a pale imitation, infusing the compositions with a catchieness capable of sustaining interest, and also possess that essential element the separates the good from the horrific in the power metal sphere, a great vocalist.  Indeed, Lynn Allers often recalls Warrel Dane of Nevermore, able to break out the air raid siren vocals on demand, but does so only when necessary.  All the cuts are solid, particularly "One Second Warning", which is probably the most memorable.  Certainly, calling this a "progressive" album would be completely misleading.  It's not at all, in fact its got "retro" written all over it.  Even in comparison to some of the band's obvious heroes, the structures are less cluttered and more straight-ahead, if anything.  That said, those who dig a rougher, earthier take of traditional 80s power metal will find a lot to like about Katagory V. Contact the band at www.katagory5.com. - Greg Northrup [February 2002]

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Kerrs Pink - A Journey on the Inside (1993)

A mediocre and ultimately unnecessary album from this reunited early 80's Scandinavian neo-progressive group.  Extremely contrived and packed with faked sentimentality within an apparently "inspirational" framework.  The poor vocalist and bad lyrics don't help the already amateurish, unoriginal and frankly tedious compositions.  Basically the album represents everything critics hate about progressive rock, not that that matters in of itself, but it's only at times like these that an avowed prog fan like myself can understand the grievances that outsiders might have towards our beloved genre.

A Journey on the Inside is an epic concept that is pretty lame from the get-go, a vibe I got simply from reading the gag inducing "story" in the liner notes. Something to do with some guy who finds some girl and they have some sort of adventure and so on and so forth at the end of which he discovers something about himself.  Blech.  The typos and grammatical errors didn't help.  For the most part, that sort of vibe extends to the lyrics and vocals of the album, making them unintentionally self-parodying.

Musically the album is basically a neo-progressive take on Camel, with some obvious Genesis-y influences thrown in there as well.  Since the vocalist sounds like he's simply reading the lyric sheet along with the music for the most of the album, not to mention the bad accent, the vocal portions of the album are basically negligible.  Musically, there is some competent playing, such as on "The Sorcerer", which briefly scales the heights of prime Camel.  Other parts that really caught my ear were basically fairly simplistic melodies that I definitely felt like I had heard somewhere before.  There are good moments scattered throughout the album, and the great production probably raises the level of composition up a notch.  Overall though I probably will never listen to this album again, there's nothing here that others haven't done better. - Greg Northrup [February 2001]

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Khan - Space Shanty (1972)

An excellent bluesy/hard rock album with some jazzy Canterbury influence that is unfortunately seems to be quite rare.  The album is centered around the mind-blowing guitar work of Steve Hillage, who would later go on to define jazzy space-rock with Gong.  Also present is Canterbury keyboard God Dave Stewart, who at the time was playing in the seminal Egg, but would later be featured in both Hatfield & The North and National Health.  Both players are in fine form, making for a great mixture of space-rock and Canterbury influence.  There is also a good amount of straight-up hard rock on the album, helped out especially by the very cool vocals of Nick Greenwood, whose timbre reminds me of Rob Halford's lower registers.  Most of the songs have a huge vocal presence, and much of the album is based on a repetitive verse/chorus/verse cycle, however in every song the band breaks out into some extended soloing highlighted by some masterful interplay between Stewart and Hillage.

The title track has some volcanic riffs from Hillage which make it a personal highlight.  "Mixed Up Man of the Mountains" is a mid-tempo rock song with some very cool and catchy vocal parts.  "Hollow Stone" closes out the album in grand fashion, blending together some powerful guitar riffs with some great Hammond thrown in.  Overall, this is a very solid album that is a must get for fans of Steve Hillage as well as for fans of Dave Stewart.  Very guitar-oriented with a significant hard rock presence throughout though.  Very enjoyable. - Greg Northrup [2000]

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Roland Kovac New Set - The Master Said (1971)

One of the most recent reissues from Germany's Garden of Delights label is an album that has been largely unknown within progressive rock circles.  Interestingly, the album was originally recorded by four session musicians on a label that specialized in jazz for the purpose of advertising and television background music, hence the rather nondescript cover art.  How well it served its purpose is somewhat questionable, as in reality, The Master Said is actually a fairly solid platter of jazzy, vaguely Soft Machine-ish progressive rock.  Thankfully, the record has been rescued from the depths of obscurity, and will surely provide a needed fix for connoisseurs of 70s German prog.  

Bandleader Roland Kovac is the star here, and his flailing, distorted organ provides both a consistently intriguing rhythmic backdrop as well as some outstanding lead playing.  The similarly fuzzy basslines from Franz Loffler are all very tasty, and effects-laden instrumental dueling dominates the 17 minute title cut.  Though the piece is divided into a number of different identifiable sections, the emphasis on individual soloing is still characteristic throughout, despite the distinct variance of main themes in each section.  Surprisingly, the rest of the album is a slight departure, being a bit more toned down and melancholy.  "Birth of a Saint" digs in with a slow, lurching bass groove over which Kovac pounds his organ, ringing sustained notes that oscillate beautifully in the speakers.  "Eternal Dimension" and "David's Dance" are two short, mellow pieces that close out the album.  Both contain some pleasant melodic ideas, but are not particularly impressive one way or the other.

It's all very noodly in the end; sometimes the backing chord changes are made too obvious, and the sound overall may get samey for some listeners, but there are an abundance of great moments to be found for sure.  Certainly an enjoyable record and a recommended item for followers of this label. - Greg Northrup [September 2002]

Kukl - Holidays in Europe (The Naughty Nought) (1986)

What's this?  A more brittle Sleepytime Gorilla Museum?  A punkier Honeymoon Killers?  (Those are the guys that did the bonus track stuck onto Aksak Maboul's Un Peu de l'Âme des Bandits CD, in case you don't remember.)   Or is it a rock equivalent of Schoenberg's _Pierrot Lunaire_?  Well, no, it's not really any of those.  Holidays in Europe is certainly a hard album to pin down, though.  The sound is a weird mixture -- scrawny no-wave guitars, angry post-punk drumming, electronic noise, distorted samples, strange dissonant keyboard figures, snatches of lounge, jazz and 18th century classical music... and, weirdest of all, the vocals.  Both vocalists fit nicely into the "insane" category, with Björk ranging from nervous Sprechstimme to all-out hysteria, and Einar Örn speaking, grunting, shrieking in terror and occasionally even singing.  Both tend to use English, but with strong Icelandic accents.

The music isn't the only hard thing to figure out about the album; although any Kukl website will tell you that there are official names for the tracks, they're not listed anywhere on the CD.  To make matters worse, there seem to be two different sets of titles.  The first suggests that Holidays in Europe is a concept album about, well, holidays in europe.  The second, more cryptic set, however, seems to be more tied to what the music is actually about. "Latent," for instance, seems to be about a rape, and "Just By The Book" is about being manipulated by a religious fanatic.

Certainly, the music is more in line with a concept album about abusive relationships than with one about taking a vacation.  From the very opening, you know this album is going to take you for a ride -- literally, as it opens with a voice welcoming us on board Iceland Air.  But while "Outward Flight" does deal with flying in a way ("Watch how he docks and wings away from satellites, see"), there's something else going on here.  Einar Örn's trumpet blurts and gurgles in the background, while surprisingly aggressive drumming underscores dissonant atmospheric synths and keyboard parts that sound like tuned percussion.  When Björk sings the phrase "growing longer," she giggles as if at some private joke.  At the three-minute mark, her singing dissolves into wild whoops and echoing shrieks.  When she sings that "everyone is gone" at the end of the song, she sounds more anxious than impressed.

From here the music only gets stranger.  "A Mutual Thrill," for example, starts out with some heavily-echoed sounds -- an electronic whomp and a fat major chord played by an orchestra.  Ten seconds of digitally altered chamber music for clarinet and piano, and then we get the first appearance of both vicious 80s synth drums (reminiscent of Thinking Plague's "Warheads") and Einar's voice, screaming "THROUGH THE WINDOOOOW!" Scratchy guitars and twiddly chromatic keyboard work pile up to produce an effect of highly rhythmic chaos, with windows of harmonic coherence showing through only at certain points.  "Latent" is equally weird, with its terrifying, relentless rhythm, elephant-like trumpet, sampled harpsichord waltz and brief but furious drum solo.  "Zro" might be the most eccentric track on the album -- it begins and ends with sampled French sentences, and it also has Einar Örn actually trying to sing!  Unfortunately, this effect is more grating than creepy -- but that's okay, because the song lacks the focus of the rest of the album, and would thus be the low-point of the album no matter who sang on it.

As often seems to be the case, the low-point and the high-point are on consecutive tracks: "Just by the Book" is certainly the best song here.  The texture is crystal-clear, and yet it's strangely difficult to figure out exactly what the instrumentation is.  The guitars are even more thin and grating than on "A Mutual Thrill," and the ponderous bassline is truly scary.  The contrast between the two vocalists is never better than here: Einar Örn screams in horror that "the man on the cross, he keeps staring at me," but an oblivious Björk is just happy because she's "in this relationship now, oooh!"  But even as she blithely babbles about her new boyfriend, skitters of atonal piano and high-pitched synth melodies foreshadow horrifying things to come.  Indeed, by the end of the song she is "willing to convince everyone... you don't have to think, he think for you!"  Kukl's incredible way of adding and subtracting enormously complex textures allows details like the sampled applause that shows up towards the end of the song to be at once very obvious and barely noticeable.

So who says you need a prog pedigree to do a great concept album?  Despite a bit of general stylistic sameness, this is an incredibly powerful, cohesive and terrifyingly beautiful album.  Go buy it now, before it goes out of print. - Alex Temple [November 2001]

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Kultivator - Barndomens Stigar (1980)

This album was once described to me as "National Health with Magma bass", and after giving it some weeks of focused listening, I think that description pretty much holds true.  Of course, it's slightly oversimplified.  There are a wealth of other influences here, especially hints of Scandinavian folk music and traces of old school RIO.  Still, the enchanting Canterbury sensibility pinned down by a throbbing rhythm section replete with growling, unrelenting basslines is the most striking, and ultimately most attractive, feature of Barndomens Stigar.  The music here is seemingly heavily composed, rendering less of an improvisational, solo-based air than you'd find on many of the classic Canterbury albums.  The themes here are impossibly dense and complex, with a heavy, thought out interplay between the superior bass and the barrage of organ, piano and Fender Rhodes.

"Höga Hästar" opens the album with a pummeling drum/bass groove that immediately sets the tone for the rest of the CD, kicking the listener squarely in the ass while severe organ and keyboard riffs complement the rhythm.  "Vemond" is slightly more toned down, at least at points, and introduces a flute-like instrument that is used often throughout, as well as female vocals that bear more than a passing resemblance to the Northettes, the female vocal tandem from the Hatfield & the North albums.  Both these elements are heavily utilized throughout, and the unique wind instrument textures actually render the title track among the best cuts on the album.  Passages of throttling bass and shimmering electric piano are offset by heavily ethnic themes, making for an absolutely beautiful, and addictive, juxtaposition of influences.  "Grottekvarnen" heavily features the wordless female vocals, which chant along over a impossibly catchy, up-tempo instrumental theme, another highlight.  The bonus tracks on here were actually recorded for the reissue in 1992, and are surprisingly good considering the circumstances.  In fact, they don't sound out of place on the album at all.  "Häxdans" in particular stands out, once again using the ethnic flute as a melodic basis.

Unfortunately, this is the only album that Kultivator did, yet stands on its own as one of the finest albums to come out of Sweden, or all of Scandinavia for that matter.  A killer recording that provides a hearty blend of zeuhl and Canterbury, and should appeal to fans of both those genres. - Greg Northrup [October 2001]

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