Rain
Make The Day Break
Shadoks Music

Until a couple of years ago Rain was a rather unknown name in Norwegian rock history, due to the fact that they never released any "real" albums back in the days (late 60's/early 70's), only a couple of obscure stage/musical-related releases came out, but they didn't show what Rain was all about, which was progressive rock. They did play some occasional concerts, but this material would remain undocumented until German Shadoks Music started digging a couple of years ago. In 2012 they released Norsk Suite, containing among other things some rather interesting versions of Beatles/Lennon-songs ("A Day in the Life", "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Isolation"), making it clear that Rain deserves so much more than a (mostly) black spot in history. However, last year's Make The Day Break made an even stronger point, featuring live recordings from 1974 that clearly show that Rain probably were among the best and most interesting Norwegian prog rock bands around at the time. Again their cover versions ("Summer in the City"/Sebastian, "Paper Sun"/Capaldi/Winwood), "Piece Of My Heart"/Ragovoy/Berns) are inventive and exciting, just as interesting as their own material. The vinyl edition of Make The Day Break was released last summer, now the CD version is here, adding an 11 minute long bonus track, the self-penned "Sort Messe" ("Black Mass"), originally written and recorded as a soundtrack for a Norwegian radio play adaptation of a John Dickson Carr story. Spooky and cinematic (or rather radiomatic!), further documenting the band's greatness. It's just too bad all this didn't surface until now, but now that it has, Rain should be on the top of the list of Norwegian progressive rock bands from the 70's to check out. Highly recommended!

Copyright © 2014 Knut Tore Breivik