TYBURN TALL — Tyburn Tall (review)

Album · 1972 · Proto-Metal

3/5 · 2022-05-29
siLLy puPPy

One of the many German Krautrock bands to merge the psychedelic 60s with the hard rock 70s TYBURN TALL emerged from the small city of Speyer having formed out of the ashes of a 60s band called The Screamers. The bizarre band name appears to come from a tall tree that existed in the English city of Tyburn. The band only released this one self-titled album in 1972 but existed from 1969 - 1975 and was quite prolific in the live scenes where TYBURN TALL opened up for a multitude of bands including Golden Earring, Space Odetty (who became Frumpy), Renaissance, Amon Düül II, Taste, East of Eden, Hardin & York, Kin Ping Meh, Ekseption, Renaissance and Nine Days Wonder.

Although the lineup changed considerably during the band’s six year run, the quintet that appeared on this album featured Stefan Kowa (bass), Hanns Dechant (drums, percussion), Klaus Fresenius (vocals), Werner Gallo (guitar) and Reinhard Magin (keyboards). The original vinyl remains one of those highly collectibles with only 200 copies having been pressed and approximately half of those having been destroyed in a fire. The album has also been notoriously horrible in the production department and since the master tapes went missing the 1999 CD reissue on Garden of Delights was lifted from the original vinyl.

As far as the sound is concerned TYBURN TALL was sort of a more hard rock version of The Nice with its classical infused organ riffs which were the dominant of the feature of the band. The guitar, bass and drum triumvirate were primarily blues rock based with an extra dosage of energetic performance thus allowing the band to fall under the umbrella term of early 70s hard rock. The original vinyl featured four tracks, three of which raced passed the 10-minute mark. The music was basically extended jamming sessions that incorporated classical keyboard riffs and hard rock bravado. The CD reissues feature an extra two bonus tracks which makes the entirety of the TYBURN TALL experience available around an hour of music.

Despite being released in the peak prog year of 1972, TYBURN TALL sounded a couple years behind the prog game. The organ tones are similar to those of Cressida and the late 1960s and this style of rocking the classics was very much en vogue with The Nice in the late 60s before the 70s were ushered in however there were a few hold outs including the other German band called The Pink Mice which existed from 1970 - 1973. TYBURN TALL gets kudos for their energetic performances as they must’ve put on one excellent show and many Germans who still remember them from those days claim as much however the band lacked creativity and the production is fairly blah.

Basically this is an album’s worth of heavy blues rock that adds classical organ runs however the aspect i appreciate the least on this album are the goofy vocals of Klaus Fresenius who sounds like a precursor to those famous heavy metal screams and wails of the 1980s. Sounding like a less competent Klause Meine of the Scorpions at times, he didn’t quite have the vocal stamina or the ability to obtain the correct pitch at key moments. The guitar soloing is also fairly generic. In fact the album makes me think of some generic band that played at Woodstock in 1969 as the vibe is very much rooted in that timeframe. Overall there is nothing really bad about this album but it does sound rather amateurish and considering the band had already existed for three years before this was released doesn’t make me believe that they ever really got their act together. As it is, an interesting relic from so long ago and not much else.