Swedish vocals, English vocals
International relevance: **
The city of Mönsterås is famed for
its long running Mönsterås Blues Band, but Plebb took it all one
step further and went straight for a sound influenced by hard rock
and the burgeoning New Wave of
British Heavy Metal.
Founded
in 1976, they made their debut in 1978 with a cassette released in a
tiny edition of 40 copies, made by the band members themselves –
all 16-18 years old – and sold to their eager local fanbase. The
small but instant success prompted the band to make a proper LP only
a few months later. 500 copies were pressed of ”Yes It Isn't It”,
an album as primitively recorded as the cassette before it. Two
locations were used for the sessions, a school and a biker club. The
latter makes perfect sense – the album is a heavy affair that
presumably went down well with the local bikers.
Peter
Martinson's and Per-Martin Persson's fuzzed out dual guitars are up
front screaming – a bit too up front actually, as it
makes the overall sound appear a bit unbalanced. Especially the
vocals suffer from being buried in the mix. Not that it's too much of
a problem as the vocals are weak. The rhythm section is at least
adequate but unexceptional, the songwriting's decent but
unimaginative – most of the band's energy supply was obviously
spent on the guitar amps.
Fans of UK band Dark (of ”Round the
Edges” fame) may want to check out ”Yes It Isn't It” for the
sake of it, but you probably need to be a die-hard heavy rock
aficionado not to eventually dismiss ”Yes It Isn't It” as the
bland album it is. There are
several good 70's heavy rock album from Sweden but this is not one of
them. It's debatable if this should even account for
progg, but I decided to include it here since it's listed in ”The
Encyclopedia of Swedish Progressive Music”.
Plebb later changed their name to
Purple Haze and released a mini album in 1981. Plebb reunited briefly
some years ago. Peter Martinson remains an active musician.
Full album playlist
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