Phallus Dei [Enhanced, Original recording remastered]

Amon Duul II | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 18, 2006)
• Original Release Date: 2005
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced, Original recording remastered
• Label: Revisited Records
• ASIN: B0009LNRL4
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #110,100 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Originally released in 1969 Phallus Dei is the classic and incredible debut by Krautrock legends Amon Düül II, post the splitting of the original Amon Düül commune. Impossible to describe, Phallus Dei is a complex conglomeration of psychedelic rock, jazzy, folk-inspired, fuzzed out, organized chaos. Their most 60s sounding recording retains all it’s magic in this present day, not sounding a bit dated. Accessible and intriguing, Phallus Dei is a good place to start for the uninitiated and also serves as the ultimate re-issue of one of the best in a handful of the finest in the Krautraock genre.

Amon Düül II, the second formation of this now legendary band, are one of the earliest and best known of the German experimental (Krautrock) bands. For the complete re-issue series of the Amon Düül II catalogue, the CDs will be released as remastered deluxe editions, with enhanced booklets, featuring new liner notes and photos.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great remaster of classic German psych album, April 11, 2002

By 

happydogpotatohead "happydogpotatohead" (New Orleans, LA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Phallus Dei (Audio CD)

This remaster of the first Amon Duul II outing is well worth re-buying. I already had the previous CD reissue, but this version is eye-opening. The aural muddiness and sometimes excessive reverb on the first reissue have been stripped away and the volume has been brought up. It's like looking at a painting that's been restored.

Perhaps the best thing I can say is that I found new things that I hadn't heard before, and I've listened to this album many, many times. There were times I found myself saying, "Wait, was this on my other CD?"

It's not often that you can take something that was cool to begin with and make it even cooler. My previous review of this CD still stands, but with this remastering I'm even more enthusiastic about it. This is an essential document for anybody who loves psychedelic music. If only more of the great German psych bands' albums were remastered this well! A big "danke" to Amon Duul II for their remastering and reissue of this terrific music.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mind-altering German space-psych. Enter the Magick Theater!, October 12, 1999

By 

happydogpotatohead "happydogpotatohead" (New Orleans, LA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Phallus Dei (Audio CD)

This is Amon Duul II's first album, and it's everything that the American psych/freakout bands promised but could not deliver. These guys are so lysergic that they make the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane, their american contemporaries at the time (1969) sound like coffee drinking office secretaries by comparison. Furiously surging, ebbing and flowing, the music combines elements of garage rock, avant-garde, psychedelia, and just plain all-out weirdness. The end effect is like being submerged in the ocean of an alien planet. All the lyrics are in German but it doesn't matter; what matters is that you will be swept away. This band should be ranked far above most of their American psych contemporaries. Truly psychedelic music, not for the faint of heart, but spiral into the Duulian atmosphere and you may never return.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New music for a new era, almost forty years ago !!!!!, December 9, 2005

By 

PortugueseMusicFan (Porto, Portugal) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Phallus Dei (Audio CD)

This remastered edition of "Phallus Dei" is outstanding!! The terrific cover itself is now with fine colours, with the ladies getting more expression in the back of the naked tree full of birds... At the first seconds of "Kanaan", the first track, we can delight with a full-bodied sound, as listening the panic male voice at the entrance, telling us that something really creepy is gone happen...the "four" tribal minutes of "Kanaan" are a dazzling musical experience and the summoning of all powers of this innovative german group...this is really the new music of a new era, still fresh today!!! Almost forty years ago, how bold this was!!!
Second and third tracks, "Dem Guten, Schönen, Wahren" and "Luzifers Ghilom" are that kind of Amon Düül II status, something between humor and terror, a kind of new ethnic chanting with hypnotic rhythms...there's a gloomy waltz at the end of "Dem Guten..." introducing the next track, and here Current 93 had plenty of sounds to sampler for their frightening records...a cry in despair (Luzifer?), menacing drums and almost-hindu chants, again a lot of nasty chorus, a desperate violin...
"Henriette Krötenschwanz", the fourth track, is a little lighter tune, in fact is a disturbing and pointless march, here Renate Knaup trying to emulate some kind of witch...
"Phallus dei", the last track of this psychedelic masterpiece, is a extended magnific jam-session, divided into various movements, always getting the trance way...it's quite extraordinary the middle-section, a madness of bongos and turkish drums side-by-side with savage screams...
Anyway, a must-buy for any psychedelic/krautrock/progressive lover...and with this superb remastered edition, a must-must!!
(The bonus tracks are unreleased versions of later recordings of the band, a nice addition!!)