Toad - Toad (1971) (Japan Edition, 2008)

Toad's self-titled debut album may have, single-handedly, kicked off the entire Swiss hard rock movement in the '70s. Their first single, "Stay." made a great deal of headway on the Swiss charts -- a feat that no other hard rock band had ever accomplished in that country. Essentially a power trio consisting of Vittorio "Vic" Vergeat (guitar/vocals), Werner Frohlich (bass) and Cosimo Lampis (drums), Toad enlisted the help of vocalist Bens Jaeger for this (and only this) album. Heavily blues-based rock (? la Cream/Black Sabbath) was the major force behind Toad's hard driving sound, with bassist Frohlich providing a mean (and meanderingly gutsy) counterpoint to Vergeat's loose and greasy guitar licks. The record also has moments of Deep Purple-like propulsion, no doubt thanks to that band's engineer Martin Birch, who manned the controls on this one as well. Like most of the B-list (sometimes C-list) rock groups that Italian imprint Akarma has reissued throughout the early 2000s, Toad's debut was mainly a collector's object in its LP form. There were better bands out there, doing the same sort of thing, but, chances are, those records were already on the shelves of most die-hard collectors. Albums like Toad may have enjoyed regional success in their time, but were largely forgotten or relegated to "closet classic" status (if they were remembered at all). These types of records have been fetching higher and higher prices over the years and it's darn good to see a reissue label dipping into this pool of underappreciated groups. In fact, if you have an appetite for this sort of thing, Akarma's reissue lineup really can't be beat -- plus, they'll save you from getting all that funky record-sleeve-mold on your fingers while you spend months searching for the (rare, rare, rare) original vinyl editions.