English vocals
International relevance: ***
Sometimes, record collecting seems to
be more about collecting characteristics than collecting great music.
A heavy style, especially if psych inflicted, often seems enough to
make a particular album collectible. Add scarcity as a parameter, and
collectors gladly toss up their last sorry coins they could have
spent on intrinsically better and far more interesting albums which
instead get ignored and even scowled at. It's all a matter of taste
of course, but record collectors' incitements do appear downright
absurd to me from time to time, not to mention tiresome.
”Daybreak” perfectly illustrates
this, released by Gothenburg's Epizootic on their own Fejl label in
1976. Getting a nine star rarity rating in ”The Encyclopedia of
Swedish Progressive Music”, the album fetches huge prices on the
collectors market, and counting. Yes, the album is loud and
energetic but that's all there is to it. At times trying to write
complex songs, some of them marred by a nerve-grating electric piano and some quasi Jethro Tull flute playing, Epizootic bite off more than they can chew, ending up
with a disjointed mess of good intentions going bad. Once they stop
pretending they have the necessary virtuosity to set this beast into
real motion they do in fact fare better, revealing themselves as the
sluggish biker bar band they really are.
The vocals are weak too, in English –
or so they say. Apart from the poor English of the song titles, the prosody and pronounciation are so bad that the
language is hard to even discern at times, and that hardly makes
”Daybreak” any more credible or appealing. Label name Fejl – a
fake Swedish spelling of English word ”fail” – is meant as a
joke but nevertheless highly appropriate given the linguistical
fallacies plaguing the album. Well, at least they got that right –
fail.
I don't mind incompetent music per se,
but when ineptitude comes with overblown ambitions nourished by
delusional conceit, the result is not only inferior but infuriating.
Singer and bassist Pär Ericson and
guitarist Bengt Fischer later achieved success with noted heavy metal combo
EF Band after having relocated to the UK, releasing a couple of
albums and additional 45's.
Full album
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