EL SHALOM - FROST - 1976

Единственный альбом группы !!! Лиричный немецкий прогрессив с лидирующей гитарой и обволакивающими клавишами. Музыканты поют на альбоме и по-английски и по-немецки, что придает музыке определенный шарм и пикантность. Поклонникам Wind, Sahara, Subject Esq, Novalis .


El Shalom's Frost is of interest mainly because of the well played instrumentation, where guitars and keyboards are the dominant instruments and many of the tracks feature some very nice guitar leads. This album draws heavily from a variety of influences including Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd and, to a much lesser degree, King Crimson. Released in 1976, many of those band's seminal works had already been released and so it is not surprising to think that they may have had some influence on this German band. The band combine both the dark elements – guitars, bass, and some of the drums – and lighter elements – flute, guitar leads, percussion and some of the keyboard washes (moog, organ and mellotron) of each of these sources. There is a level of complexity to the arrangements that is often mired in muddy production – not on the part of GoD for this reissue, but in the original recording.
The CD contains four bonus tracks, the 7" re-recorded version of "Birthday Song" (which doesn’t benefit anything from the clearer production) and its flip, "Geld." The latter two are live recordings from, which shows an El Shalom with an angrier, harsher sound.


El Shalom were a German group from the late 70s whose only album, Frost, has surprisingly eluded reissue until just recently. The band's style sits nicely along some other later 70s underground German bands; Wind, Sahara, Subject Esq. and Novalis among them. Still, El Shalom does sound a little rougher and unpolished than many of the above, perhaps due to a grittier sounding mix and a slightly more than occasional reliance on established genre clichés. That said, for the most part El Shalom cultivates their own feel, mixing in a rough hard rock aesthetic in with moments of more traditional symphonic splendor. Particularly engaging is the keyboard work of Joachim Brands, whose ready deployment of generous doses of Moog, organ and mellotron will have symph fans salivating. The guitars of Gunter Christ take center stage on other cuts, like the raucous, catchy opener "Der Werbegnom", which is nothing if not infectious. The worst moments come when the band makes the ill-advised, yet all too common, decision to sing in English on tracks like "Princess June", "Leipzig" and the particularly twee "Birthday Song", which does lend an air of amateurish ineffectiveness to points of the album. While these moments tend to stick out on early listen, they in reality only make up minor parts of the album. More representative are the flute-led melodic flights on the morose title track, or the moog backed guitar dirges of "Alvin Zweistein". The German vocals which tend to dominate the affair are on the whole quite appealing, often reminding of the aforementioned Novalis as well as Stern Combo Meissen with their almost anthemic, sing along feel, particularly in the well developed, addictive structure of "Krieslaufkollaps".
- Greg Northrup


Owing to different musical tastes of the band, ther is a large range of diverse styles that the band has to cope with. By making productive use of these different styles rather than fending them off, a synthesis is created which is interesting and exciting for both the musicians and the audience, integrating elements of jazz, classical music and folk into rock music. This was recorded in 1976 by a quintet of guitars/flutes/saxes, keyboards, guitar, bass, drums and vocals, and they definitely had elements of the big progressive bands of the day, such as Yes or Genesis, but in a more underground/primitive/rock kinda way. Originally released in a private edition of 500, this has 4 bonus tracks added.