Wallenstein

German rock band who went though many styles during their history. Formed in Mönchengladbach by classically trained art student Jürgen Dollase in autumn 1971 as Blitzkrieg, with an international cast of: American Bill Barone, Dutchman Jerry Berkers, and local friend Harald Grosskopf. After only a couple of concerts, they were quickly spotted and eagerly signed up by Pilz. But, there proved to be a problem, also touring Germany at the time was a British band called Blitzkrieg, so a change of name was needed…

Wallenstein belongs to the golden age of german prog rock. Their music is not krautrock despite that this album is well influenced by the work of Jurgen Dollase in the Cosmic Jokers project…Wallenstein puts forward a fast and furious neo-classical progressive rock. The epic and symphonic keyboards parts played mostly in arpeggios and falling scales are brighten up by interesting guitars and drums lines…

Wallenstein were a band that transcended a number of musical styles during their decade-plus of existence, from early krautrock to symphonic to space rock toward the end of their existence. Wallenstein's original line-up was centered around keyboardist/vocalist Jürgen Dollase and drummer Harald Großkopf, both of whom would go on to make names even bigger for themselves in the German music business (Dollase with The Cosmic Jokers and Großkopf as a founding member of Ashra and later the Central Europe Performance). The band was originally named Blitzkrieg, but as they readied their first studio release the band discovered a prior band with that name so changed theirs and retained 'Blitzkrieg' as the title of that first album.

WALLENSTEIN were a band that transcended a number of musical styles during their decade-plus of existence, from early krautrock to symphonic to space rock toward the end of their existence…

This time around, German proggers Wallenstein took their classically inspired music to the extreme - even milking the sub-label for themselves as a 'Symphonic Rock Orchestra' for all it's worth - in rather large lettering on the cover. The compositions do have strong classical leanings whether they promote the fact or not, especially in Jurgen Dollase's Piano playing and Joachim Reiser's Violin…

Wallenstein 1977 ; classical Pianist Jurgen Dollase and Bassist Jurgen Pluta from the previous album's line-up have enlisted new members Gerd Klocker (Guitars) and Nicky Gebhard (Drums/Perc.) and dispensed with their Violinist altogether. So much for the 'Symphonic Rock Orchestra' vision lasting for too long…. The band have now signed to a major, RCA (Germany), and obviously it's within their walls where Dollase signed along the dotted line and commercial considerations were taken into account. Actually, the new music does have moments of the once decent band they were, amidst the instrumental passages of the longer cuts…