Schwarzarbeit ~ Germany

Schwarzarbeit (1980)

Schwarzarbeit's debut is like a lot of albums from the late 70s and early 80s German landscape. It's a type of symphonic progressive rock, but never too daring, and a couple of AOR moments thrown out in case a record executive happens to stop by. Mostly melodic in that later Novalis way, or later Camel if you prefer. Mostly reminds me of same era Anyone's Daughter. Hard to imagine a couple of these guys ended up playing in that most progressive thrash band Mekong Delta. They can't possibly be more different. Perhaps there was some pent-up anger that needed to be released?

Interesting for me to realize I had published some notes about this album on the CDRWL, but never duplicated them here. Why it's interesting is those notes were penned nine years ago, and yet this review could have been that review, even after a recent revisit. So here they are for posterity:

---7/28/10

Good ole Schwarzarbeit. I bought the second album well over 20 years ago, and was surprised to find out that it's still without a CD issue. And that's because of Musea's issue of their 3rd album James Gordon's Story, which I also bought at the time of release (1994 / 1995). So now I've finally heard the debut, and I can say that Schwarzarbeit are remarkably consistent. The key word with Schwarzarbeit is "almost". They're almost very good. The debut starts off with a pretty awful vocal number only to be followed by eight well done melodic rock instrumentals. The second album is similar, as is their final album (only released on CD). Schwarzarbeit are the kind of group that is nice to have in the collection, but not one you'll pull out with any kind of regularity. There's always something better to listen to. But it could be worse... It's almost great.

7/28/10 (review); 6/9/19 (update / new entry)