Amon Duul - Psychedelic Underground
Amon Duul - Paradieswarts Duul 

Most music fans probably have this experience, particularly musicians, where someone, usually a friend of a friend, really wants you to hear their music, anything from a demo tape to actually sitting there and singing with a guitar. Although there are exceptions, most of the time it’s a painful experience as one must control all body language and reply with “it’s interesting” or “different” after the train wreck.

Amon Duul (I just corrected a legit typo from Dull to Duul) are the virtual embodiment of this concept, in fact the only possible explanation for them surviving into the CD era has to be a certain krautrock hipster mentality. Although with that said, the closest analog, to Psychedelic Underground anyway, has to be the first Hapshash & The Coloured Coat album, the paradigm of the nonmusician unit banging out some dodgy “tribal” rock dirge. Even beyond the idea of AD splitting up into musician and non-musician units, this is a cacaphony that perhaps overwhelms the listener with its onslaught, in some cases perhaps blowing out the critical circuit.

In listening to this (in the car I might add), I had at least two or three laugh out loud moments, where the sheer awfulness of this record stood out and grabbed my attention. They holler and bang away, so tone deaf that it would hardly matter if anything was in tune. I eyed my 6 grade on this and thought I was being way too generous and knocked it down to a 3. In fact this was the first time in years I’d pulled out the Gnosis ratings guide just to make sure I was specific in how bad this album was. Suffice it to say, it’s my fault I gave it any more than a listen and a toss.

Even more of a surprise, the band’s Ohr album Paradieswarts Duul is almost like if you’d have taken out one or two of the musicians bangers and set them on their own. Most of it is horribly played and sang, acoustic guitar led drones or ballads or whatever you might call these three long pieces. With a lot of players like this, the passion may be there, but at a detriment to my ears. Fortunately at almost 35 minutes, the album was short enough to come and go, and again I goggled at how high the grade was at a 7 and gave it an equitable three point drop.

Above all, make sure there’s a II in there somewhere when you go Amon Duul shopping.