ELOY — Eloy (review)

Album · 1971 · Proto-Metal

3/5 · 2024-08-03
siLLy puPPy

Depicting a garbage can lid on your debut album can never be a good idea really. I mean what is a music lover supposed to assume the contents of the package are inside, right?!!! Germany’s early prog scene was notorious for some of the most hideously ill-conceived album covers of the entire genre despite some of the most innovative bands emerging from its borders. ELOY of course is widely known as the band that was named after a futurist race of humans from the H.G. Wells book “Time Machine” (only there it was “Eloi”) and one of the most successful successors of the Pink Floyd space rock scene that continental Europe had to offer. So is this debut release really nothing more than rubbish? Many think so.

The band was founded in 1969 by guitarist Frank Bornemann who has kept the ELOY going for well over 50 years now with a huge array of members coming and going throughout the decades. Despite emerging alongside Germany’s Krautrock scene, ELOY was one of those bands that took a different path as they looked more towards the inspirations of the British scene rather than joining the fertile homegrown koschmische sounds that were emerging although still showing hints to its origins. Given the band was formed in Hannover, the same city which spawned The Scorpions, it’s rather interesting that while The Scorpions started out more as a krautrock band and then gravitated to the world of hard rock and heavy metal while ELOY began as the exact opposite originating as a hard rock band that then delved into the world of psychedelia.

ELOY’s self-titled debut album which was released in 1971 is the odd album out of the band’s substantial discography as it found the band the band hitting the scene as a heavy hitting bluesy hard rock band borrowed a lot from Black Sabbath, Atomic Rooster and even early Jethro Tull however even on this early offering ELOY was already employing moments that could be interpreted as psychedelic rock or Krautrock, it’s just that those moments were reserved only as opening moments or mid-song excursions rather than being teased out into lengthy psychedelic rock compositions. Nevertheless this album proved to be a testing ground where those secondary elements would soon become the dominant force. The band would quickly figure this out and emerge with its following album “Inside” as the fully gestated progressive space rock band that it is better known as.

While not unpleasant, ELOY’s debut unfortunately lacks identity and certainty as it seems to flail around throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. While the opening “Today” opens with a glimpse of its future space rock with a trippy Krautish intro but then jumps into a fiery display of hard rock guitar riffs that are obviously more inspired by Black Sabbath and fellow Hannover rockers Jane than Pink Floyd. While competent this early album pretty much is following in the footsteps of other bands rather than innovating and unfortunately Frank Bornemann’s somewhat limited vocal style doesn’t animate the heavier rock style very effectively. While the album pretty much follows in the opening track’s wake, there are a few notable exceptions. “Song Of A Parnanoid Soldier” features a style that would sound more like the future ELOY than what the rest of this album presented.

The second track “Something Yellow” which is the longest at over eight minutes showcases the band’s early prog characteristics with a piano based riff that jumps into energetic hard rock but then three quarters of the way through takes a sudden turn into the psychedelic with a slow burning guitar sequence before dissolving into an avant-garde extravaganza into free improvisational trippiness much like the most out there Krautrock bands would adopt. While the keyboards and synthesizers would become ELOY’s best friends in their atmosphere-soaked psychedelic rock of the future, on this debut such sounds are rarely implemented however the closing “Dillus Ready” does evoke a Uriah Heep or Deep Purple inspired organ based hard rock style. Bornemann’s vocal style seems to be inspired by Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson (although unconvincingly) for much of the album as he inflects his words in a similar manner.

ELOY’s debut isn’t as bad as many make it out to be as it delivers a competent slab of hard rocking heavy psych throughout its seven track run however at the same time the band sounds a little generic even by the standards of the early 70s when prog, heavy metal and other faster musical styles were diversifying. The album is rather uneven and unsure of itself as it drifts from one track to another as if it’s exploring options in how to proceed. Personally i’ve never been a huge ELOY fan at all mostly due to Bornemann’s vocals which i find unsatisfying in how they interact with the music but also because i feel ELOY borrowed too heavily from the psychedelic wellspring that Pink Floyd had been gestating since the mid-60s. The same exact dilemma is presented to me on ELOY’s debut as it is too derivative for my liking. It’s a perfectly listenable album and checks all the proper boxes for hard rock but compared to the British scene very much a second rate band at this point.