The Crabs

One of the rare new recordings to appear on GoD, the quartet from the Black Forest region of Germany named Crabs recorded an album 'Wheel of Fate' (CD 023) in 1994 that failed to find a home anywhere else. Immediately following the studio session, the band splintered apart and so it's with sheer luck that this release happened at all! Good thing - this album is too remarkable to have let pass into obscurity. Crabs had a lot in common with the American neo-psychsters, the ones with a lot of fuzz and some attitude like Helios Creed, Farflung, and especially ST 37 from Texas. The underlying music however, sounds a little more like the Ozric Tentacles covering Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold." I love it! And singer Lea Bayer, she must be the new Renate Knaup... completely fearless. Hardly a beautiful voice, but it's a matter of what you do with it, right? The band's performances are kind of rough and tumble, but when they put it all together (as on "Clean Machine")... Wow! Totally spaced-out, crazed freakazoid psychedelia. Along with S/T, Zone Six and Fantasyy Factoryy, we're now seeing some excellent German psychedelic artists that aren't really tied to the country's own past. Don't miss this one - there won't be another.