c/o Gabor Kleinbloesem, Strutter’zine, NL

The German band SHAMALL has a long history, but in short, it learns that it started in the early 1970s when a young NORBERT KRÜLER began listening to the records of LED ZEPPELIN, JIMI HENDRIX, PINK FLOYD, and those of German Krautrock bands. He started training to learn and play the songs of his new ‘heroes’ by himself, and during the 1970s he got involved in the German rock scene, and eventually, when he started to record his own material in the mid/late 1980s, the SHAMALL band or project was born.

He has achieved quite some success throughout the 30+ years of activity now, and Schizophrenia is the most recent album, which is already his 15th! He does almost everything on his own (vocals, guitars, piano, organ, keys, bass, and programming), but he is also assisted by guitarist MATTHIAS MEHRTENS, and on a few songs we can hear ANKE ULLRICH as lead singer, while she provides backing vocals on most of the other songs.

It’s quite a journey, which is spread over 2 full-length CDs, but thankfully we get to hear lovely typical German semi-instrumental/vocal music that fits somewhere between progressive rock, 80s new age/wave, synthwave, and electronic music. You might also call SHAMALL a pure Krautrock band in the classic tradition of bands like TANGERINE DREAM, KLAUS SCHULZE, CAN, ELOY, GROBSCHNITT, and so on. It’s not only synth/keyboard dominated, because there are also soaring proggy guitars slipping through (just listen to the beautiful Thoughts pt. 1), and the vocals are those of Norbert, with Anke here and there, making it an enjoyable adventure altogether to listen to these 2 CDs.

It’s definitely high-quality music we get to hear, and despite my mentioning earlier on that this is a Krautrock affair, PINK FLOYD and PORCUPINE TREE similarities are also very clearly hearable. Highlights are hard to mention, because the whole album is sounding excellent, but the lengthy title track, “World of Emotions,” “The Inconvenient Pt. 1,” “On the Run” (lovely keyboard work), and the 3 wonderful female-fronted songs (“Supernatural Dream,” “We Are All in the Same Boat,” and “Eyes of a Stranger”) are definitely quite sensational in this genre. Kraut/Prog fans absolutely need to check it out at www.shamall.com.