THIS WEEK I’M LISTENING TO…PRKLZ – Deuce (Golden Core)

Now, here’s quite a gem unearthed by the musicquarians at Golden Core. German progressive metal act PRKLZ started life as Ragnarök, and in 1990, a couple of years after coming together, recorded a demo with some assistance from Kai Hansen. According to the sleeve notes the demo got the thumbs-up all round – including the accolade of being voted third-best demo of the year in Rock Hard magazine – and the trio (guitarist/vocalist Ulrich Salomon, bassist/vocalist Nila Minnerup and drummer/vocalist Tammo Vollmers) received some record company interest but nothing concrete came of it.

Slogging away for the next few years Ragnarök’s story was the same as so many other bands – gigging, demos, a line-up change when Minnerup left (replaced by Dieter Reinhold) and finally a change of name to the less generic PRKLZ. Eventually, in 1994 the band signed to Music Is Intelligence/WMMS, a small German progressive rock label, and in one lengthy session recorded two albums’ worth of material. ‘Deuce’ was released in 1995 and proved itself to be a lively progressive metal outing with hardly a 4/4 beat in sight but masses of enthusiasm and experimentation with time changes. This would probably have gone down very well a few years later but in the mid-Nineties (think grunge and the early days of nu-metal) PRKLZ’s output was not in vogue and the album sold disappointingly. Timing is everything, and sometimes being ahead of the pack is more a curse than a blessing. Two years later they folded.

To be fair, a Grammy nomination for best vocal performance was never on the cards, but songs like ‘The Promise (Chapter II)’ and the epic (and rather funky in places) ‘On The Beach’ are cleverly created and excellently delivered. The bonus here is that this double CD adds both the unreleased second album (featuring more of ‘The Promise’ saga and the standout ‘Yellow Duck Eats Black Bat’ whose quite superb construction belies its wacky title) and the original Ragnarök demo, as well as a cover of The Beatles’ ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’, taped in 1996 – presumably the last time the band ever ventured into a studio – and also never before released. It's a fascinating snapshot in time of an interesting and creative band who were probably in the right place but at the wrong time.

John Tucker September 2026