Review Summary: Too heavy, too soon.
Germany wasn't ready for Orange Peel in 1970. With the krautrock scene still pretty much in diapers, the five piece's brand of progressive rock was too heavy, too bluesy, or just too effervescent for an audience that just wanted to chill and sway away to the extraterrestrial performances of early Kraftwerk and psychedelia's prodigal sons and daughters Popol Vuh. Where the aforementioned bands felt like an hypnotic ecstasy, Orange Peel felt like that defying look in the eye five minutes before a bar fight. The band from Frankfurt was short lived, in fact this was their only album, as its members went on to join the likes of Epsilon, Emergency or Atlantis soon after.
This self-titled debut had the peculiarity of opening with an absolute monster of track. Clocking at little over 18 minutes, "You Can't Change Them All" is basically an spectacular display of musicianship with also little to hang to. Don't expect hooks here, not even a chorus, but be ready to witness a band of very young players unleashing their musical prowess like there's no tomorrow. Expect a healthy amount of Hammond too, jaw-dropping drumming, and piercing solos emulating their American counterparts Mountain or their British peers Atomic Rooster. If the rest of the material included on this album would have been in the same vein as this track, the second part of this review would have been very different, but alas...
The rest of the album never reaches the opener's level of quality. There's a decent cover of The Nashvilles' "Tobacco Road" that serves to give Peter Bischof's vocals the space they didn't have on the opener, and it somehow makes sense, since his voice is definitely not one of the strengths of Orange Peel. There's also an attempt at sounding not German in "Faces That I Used to Know", but overall, the album only recovers its mojo with the lengthy closer "We Still Try to Change", with Ralph Wiltheiß's organ going haywire mid-track and until the end while the rest of the band improvises a way out with impressive resolve.
An additional note, if I may: I've seen this labelled as krautrock several times, but let me tell you, there are exactly 4 minutes tops of something that could be considered somewhat closer to a krautrock jam, on the closer, actually, but the rest is just pure heavy psych with a strong American flavor. This record is also a very good option if you want to burn cash and throw away a good chunk of your savings, because the original LP copies are on sale for the same price of a private jet ride to Honolulu from Alaska, so be sure to have your priorities sorted out the next time you go on a prog shopping spree.
