Eloy - Inside (1973 German Prog-Rock)

Eloy was only on their second album when they introduced their first major change of direction in sound. With the departure of founding member Erich Schriever, Frank Bornemann found himself able to take the group on a more resolutely progressive rock road. Still strongly hard-rocking, though, the music is dominated in turns by Bornemann's guitar solos and Manfred Wieczorke's Deep Purple-esque overdriven Hammond organ. The 17-minute "Land of No Body" tries too hard to emulate the clichés of the prog rock epic. A space-related theme ties together a string of riffs and extended solos. It lacks meat around the bone, and in the end sounds a lot like Benefit-era Jethro Tull. The shorter tracks are more satisfying. "Inside" and "Future City" rock hard and efficiently, the former pushing Wieczorke up front, the latter featuring Bornemann's best vocal impression of Ian Anderson. The closer, "Up and Down," remains, for the most part, a dazed piece filtered by Led Zeppelin and Procol Harum. Compared to the following year's Floating, Inside represents a transition from Eloy's first incarnation and a first exhibition of their leader's main influences -- influences that he still needed to digest. The 2001 remastered edition from EMI adds the two tracks from the 1973 single "Daybreak"/"On the Road."

AMG Review by François Couture

Eloy - Power and the Passion (1975 German Prog-Rock)

Much like Eloy's 1973 LP, Inside, Power and the Passion acts as a transitional album. With more weaknesses than strengths, it contains all the elements that would ensure the artistic success of future albums like Dawn and Ocean. For the first time, the group develops a single story over two LP sides. Gordon Bennit (who had penned down the lyrics to "Plastic Girl" from the previous year's Floating) developed a narrative in which Jamie, the son of a scientist, absorbs a "time eroding" drug and finds himself in Paris, in the year 1358. He meets Jeanne, whom he introduces to marijuana. After time spent in jail following a peasants' mutiny against their landlord, Jamie finds a eccentric magician that sends him back to his own time frame. The various episodes of this story are not well articulated, but singer Frank Bornemann has managed to write songs that fit the specific mood of each one. The introduction of synthesizers, Mellotron, and electric piano in "Love Over Six Centuries," "Imprisonment," and "The Bells of Notre Dame" announce the direction of the next albums, while the "Introduction," "Daylight," and "Back Into the Present" stay closer to the hard-rocking edge of earlier efforts. Paradoxically, this duality is what gives Power and the Passion its character and compensates for its structural flaws.

AMG Review by François Couture