Hope - Klaatu (Capitol)

by Michael Bloom

Our dispatch from Agent Klaatu indicates that, in some indeterminate future era, an entire planet will be threatened by the scourge of atavistic nationalism, and eventually destroy itself in a cataclysmic war. The tale will be told by minstrels who will pattern themselves after the courtly mannerisms of Handel's Messiah, except that they will also cop a whole slew of riffs from Beethoven, the Beatles, Broadway, and anything else that a bunch of Canadian session hacks might be expected to deal with professionally.

Klaatu have about as much grasp of their own album as the average session hack: they were completely unable to keep it from becoming an overblown, pretentious circus. They utilize devices like an ersatz archaic anthropological report in song (complete with electronically generated scratchy-record noise). They introduce a plausible piece about the heroism of the last survivor with a lullaby about being the lonliest creature in the universe. They may be copping some of the same sources as progressive rock bands, but Klaatu are just too corny.

If I thought that the music of the future was really going to be this banal, I think I'd cash in my chips right now.

Web Page Editor's note: I doubt that Mr. Bloom had ever heard rock music before this review was given to him by his editors. I also doubt that he knows what "ersatz" means. He most likely doesn't even know that classical music doesn't have "riffs" it has "motifs". He shows his total ignorance of music in this review and if I thought that the future of record reviews was going to be this banal, I think I'd cash in my chips right now.

In actuality, Michael Bloom was only at Circus Magazine because of the publisher Howard Bloom. Michael had no writing experience, and was as uninformed about writing reviews as he was about music in general. That, coupled with the fact that Circus Magazine was a heavy metal magazine that wouldn't know what prog rock was if it ran up and slapped them in the face make this review completely dismissable. Note that Michael Bloom went on to do such great things that nothing can be found out about him to this day.

Note that the author complains about the fake archaic anthropological report... This is rock and roll, not historical research. Does the author expect that everything in the heavy metal he normally listens to is entirely factual and that nothing is made up? Come on! He also says that this report is "complete with electronically generated scratchy-record noise". For those in the know, and for those like Mr. Bloom who haven't got a clue, that wasn't electronically generated. It was from a real scratchy record. But then, considering the source, I wouldn't have expected Mr. Bloom to know something real from something electronically generated.