Eloy – Power And The Passion

Power And The Passion is the fourth studio album by German progressive rock band Eloy, released in 1975. For the first time, the group develops a story over two sides of an LP. Gordon Bennett, who wrote the lyrics to “Plastic Girl” from last year’s Floating album, developed a narrative that follows Jamie, a scientist’s son, who ingests a time-eroding drug and finds himself in Paris in the year 1358. There he meets Jeanne, who introduces him to marijuana. After spending time in prison after a group of farmers revolted against their landlord, Jamie finds an eccentric sorcerer who sends him back to his own timeline.

Like their 1973 LP Inside, Power And The Passion acts as a transitional album between his earlier style of jam-inclined psychedelic rock and more mature spacey and symphonic progressive rock. With weaknesses as well as strengths, it contains all the elements that would ensure the artistic success of their future records such as Dawn and Ocean. The various episodes of this story are not well structured, but the group’s singer Frank Bornemann managed to write songs that fit the specific mood of each. The introduction of synthesizers, mellotron, and electric piano on “Love Over Six Centuries,” “Imprisonment,” and “The Bells Of Notre Dame” foreshadow the direction the group’s subsequent albums would take, while Introduction, “Daylight” and “Back Into The Present” are closer to the hard rock texture of the group’s previous efforts, and paradoxically, it’s this duality that gives Power And The Passion its character and compensates for any structural flaws.

The first four tracks on the album are fantastic and are arguably the best twenty-four minute span the band has put together at any point. Particularly impressive on these tracks is Detlef Schwaar’s electric guitar, which suddenly takes the reins as the band’s primary instrument after two records where the organ and synthesizers played a leading role. Synthesizer and piano also play a prominent role, foreshadowing Dawn and Ocean, and although the arrangements are not as complex as on subsequent albums, each of these tracks is very interesting, as is the excellent instrument-guitar interplay in the second half of “Mutiny”.

The second side of Power And The Passion also features two separate tracks “Imprisonment” and “Daylight” as well as a hard rock track that doesn’t quite fit in with the rest “Back Into The Present”. The only really real tracks on the second side, are the more relaxed, “The Bells Of Notre Dame” and the harder rocking-instrumental “The Zany Magician”.

Through this very good album I select the trilogy of introduction “Introduction”, “Journey Into 1358” and “Love Over Six Centuries”.

Tracklist

A1.       Introduction   1:10

A2.       Journey Into 1358       2:56

A3.       Love Over Six Centuries         10:05

A4.       Mutiny             9:07

B1.       Imprisonment 3:12

B2.       Daylight          2:38

B3.       Thoughts Of Home     1:04

B4.       The Zany Magician     2:38

B5.       Back Into The Present 3:07

B6.       The Bells Of Notre Dame        6:26