HAIRY CHAPTER

Can’t Get Through, Bacillus Records, Germany, 1971. £450.

‘One of the wildest hard rock albums of its time.’

Can’t Get Through is one of the wildest, most uncompromising and beautifully schizophrenic hard rock albums of its time.

The underground German rock scene was really happening during the late 60s/early 70s, and by 1971 these guys were shaking and screaming from right at its core.

Coming together in 1966 in Bonn, they started out as the Concrete Movement, before releasing their debut album in 1969 under the pseudonym Chaparall Electric Sound. Their first as Hairy Chapter was the bluesy, progressive and slightly psychedelic album Eyes.

Sharing the stage with Sabbath on several occasions obviously impacted their sound and aggression, although the complex/off-the-wall nature of the material is unlike anything else from the time. The masterful yet out of control vocal delivery of Harry Unte shrieks and howls gloriously over a backdrop of bewildering time changes, experimental studio effects and some truly mindshredding, lysergic guitar assaults.

Opener There’s A Kind Of Nothing comes across as a heavy Led Zep on

LSD, the 10-minute title track is an epic progressive acid workout, eight-minute beast It Must Be An Officer’s Daughter, follows the same unpredictable path before exploding into free-form jazzrock, with crazed soloing panning from speaker to speaker over solid drum and bass improvisation. Unfortunately, Can’t Get Through proved to be this astonishing band’s final release. LD