SAMBANDET – Gud är! (no label, 1976)

Instrumental, Swedish vocals, English vocals

International relevance: **

This is one of the most striking obscurities from the Swedish Jesus underground. Still largely undiscovered, two tracks were included on Subliminal Sound's excellent ”Frälst!” comp, so I suspect it's only a matter of time until prices skyrockets. (One guy on Discogs already tries to cram a laughable €300 out of it – yeah, right, good luck with that.) Until then, it's still possible for a lucky guy to pick it up for peanuts in local charity shops around Sweden.

Apart from being recognized by Subliminal Sounds, the appearance of Björn Famne immediately piqued my curiousity. Famne 's finest moment is ”Vampire”, an outrageous full frontal fuzz attack originally featured on his eponymous 1975 Rasp Records EP and later revived on ”Who Will Buy These Wonderful Evils Vol. 3”. Those who because of that and Sambandet's two ”Frälst!” tracks expect a hard psych freak-out from their sole LP ”Gud är” (”God is”) from 1976 are sure to be disappointed though. As a whole, this is a different beast – but an intriguing one.

Those in the know consider ”Gud är” as one of the finest Xian albums ever to come out of Sweden, and it doesn't take much to get its appeal. It's much harder to pinpoint its style though, as it constantly changes. ”I Am Free” is a strangely prog-induced track with quacking wah-wah guitar, while ”Go(o)d News” is a bizarre kind of tripped-out studio exotica, with no similarity whatsoever to anything else on the album. (No wonder these two tracks ended up on ”Frälst!”) Unusual to a religious album, a large part of ”Gud är” is all instrumental. Some tracks remind me of a less trippy and more flute-folky Älgarnas Trädgård (but I might be just about the only person in the whole wide world to sense that), while ”Don't Be A Loser” could have been a Gabor Szabo outtake with its clean-sounding easy listening styled guitar work and feather-light beat. ”Happy” makes me think of a Gentle Giant getting drunker by the minute on Swedish schnapps while trying to play a sunlit jazz waltz. ”Vi tycker om att sjunga” translates to ”we like to sing” but is in fact another short instrumental which sounds as if it could have been the theme music from a 70s children show no-one ever saw. ”I Wanna Be More” in turn is Sambandet's stab at gospel but of course warped through a prism of female vocals private pressing UK folk. And so on.

”Gud är” is one of those albums so kaleidoscopic in style it's hard to understand what exactly the band was aiming for. Definitely inconsistent, but the inconsistency is also what gives it its weird charm and works to its advantage. Recorded in the semi-mysterious/semi-legendary Falks Studio in small city Eksjö, it has a ”professional low-budget” sound that goes well along with the decidedly mixed skills of the performers. (Falks Studio might even be the label, but who knows.) Björn Famne is a driven guitarslinger (and shows off his acoustic guitar chops on the renaissance sounding instrumental ”Bortom”), while drummer Kjell Ljunggren doesn't bother a sometimes sloppy beat.

The wild mood and style changes makes for a truly original listening experience, and once you've put it on, it's hard to turn it off as you never quite grow accustomed to its bizarre versatility. Hear it ten times, and you're still not prepared for what comes around the corner. Like I just said, I've no idea what Sambandet were trying to achieve anything but whatever lept to their minds at any given moment, but in the end, the possible lack of a proper plan almost appears visionary. It's a one-of-a-kind album no matter how you look at it, and if you decide to strictly view it as a Xian album designed to woe the Lord, it only gets even stranger and even more confusing.

Is it a masterpiece? Not necessarily, but it's sure an album you don't hear everyday but one you definitely want to hear more than once in your lifetime. If only to find it out.

Full album playlist

VARIOUS ARTISTS – Frälst! A Selection Of Swedish Christian Grooves 1969-1979 (Subliminal Sounds, 2022)

 
Featured artists: Dunkersgruppen / Shepherds / Tomas Ernvik / Sånggruppen LIV / Sambandet / Birgitta Yavari / Siw Sjöberg / Alea Jacta Est / "Boppe" Bengt-Olof Perhamn / Humlans Funkykapell / Tillsammans / The Vergers / Obajda / Kyrkans Ungdom I Osby / Janne - Roberth - Willy / Mission Impossible / Vatten / Ingamay Hörnberg / New Creation
Swedish vocals, English vocals
International relevance: ***

The American Xian (Christian) underground has been pretty well documented with several reissues of key albums and compilations extracting the best examples of what the Jesus Folk movement had to offer musically. A lot of work in that direction is still needed, but this once so neglected musical area has gained more attention in recent years than ever before. True that a lot of Xian music is absolutely dreadful to listen to, every bit as bad as it's said to be, but there are indeed albums from especially the 70s that are quite stunning, and tracks scattered on other, more uneven LP's that are worthy of resurrection. Some truly strange and bizarre music lurks in the world of Xian vinyl; fuzzed out garage rock, brain-dizzying psychedelia, singer/songwriters that are just as talented as better-known non-religious ones... and there are albums that are so weird that almost no readymade tag applies.

I don't think anyone really knows how many Xian albums were released in Sweden during the Jesus era of mainly the 70s, but with Jesus having a strong hold of Sweden during the decade, and with the Swedish Jesus movement being selfsufficient as far as recording studios, pressing plants and distribution go, a guess at several hundreds – perhaps even thousands – isn't at all laughable. Many of those turn up in the most ignored charity shop crates, and most of them remain ignored too by most flea market vinylnauts. I say most, because in some places, those maligned albums have caught more interest as the years have gone by. Somewhere on some album with a particularly appalling cover, an absolutely mindblowing track might hide. Don't forget New Creation's devastating psych anthem ”He Is There”, first brought back to life by the third volume of ”Who Will By These Wonderful Evils”! Finding just one other such track is what keeps the most hard-headed flea market hunters going despite an obvious health hazard doing so. Because bringing home ten, twenty, fifty albums of rosy-cheeked, psychotically smiling Bible thumpers, you make yourself prey to a blah-blah-ga-ga-da-da condition that may take years or more to recover from. Sanity is a fragile thing. Be careful out there.

Therefore, a compilation like ”Frälst! A Selection Of Swedish Christian Grooves 1969-1979” has been much needed for quite some time by anyone with a gnawing suspicion that they might miss out on some real goodies if you don't willingly put your health at risk. I'm somewhere in-between those who don't want to go deeper into the deep end, and those who never once betray their mission to find the next ”He Is There”, and so ”Frälst!” (meaning ”Saved!”) comes in very handy as a rough guide to the netherworld of Xian vinyl.

Compiled by Subliminal Sounds, known for their endless quest for buried treasures, the label has done some death-defying work looking in places few sane people dare to tread. It has to be said that ”Frälst!” isn't the be all and end all release -- after all, its subtitle clearly says "a selection". Thomas Ernvik is featured on all versions, but Vatten only on the vinyl version of the album; Vatten being one of the most heralded Xian Swedish bands, thanks to their hard rock sound championed by many a collector around the globe. And there are other bands that have come up with quite decent tracks too, such as Christallen, that are missing from the selection. And as always, some might questions the track picks. But the interesting thing isn't what's not here but what is. Although not every track in this collection is a winner, ”Frälst!” successfully paints a picture of a 'genre' that thoroughly contradicts the common view of it. While the sometimes over-zealous vocals and in-your-face sermonising can remain a bone of contention, there are some real fiery guitars and relentless grooving going on here, and that's what you have to focus on if you allow yourself step outside any stale preconceptions to be surprised at the width and depth of the 'genre'. I say 'genre', with quotation marks, because it's of course not correct to speak of Xian music as a heterogeneous genre: “Frälst!” contains heavy rock, tracks that head in a slight funk direction, folk, and things that can't be named anything but psychedelia.

Artists include Siw Sjöberg, Sambandet, Kyrkans Ungdom i Osby, The Vergers, Mission Impossible, Obadja and Shepherds. Some of them are slightly better known, such as Tillsammans (on Kompass) and the aforementioned Tomas Ernvik, but most of them are virtually completely unknown outside the religious world – and some probably also within the Xian community. At least nowadays. Thanks to a carefully crafted running order, “Frälst!” comes off as surprisingly consistent. Highpoints include the quirky “I Am Free” (Sambandet), the brooding “Kom till mej” (Tillsammans), the strangely ethereal “Halva världen svälter” (Shepherds) and the marvellous “Mission Impossible” (Mission Impossible) that rounds off the digital version in a doomy organ-driven fashion that easily makes it the best track in this entire lot. The vinyl version has a slightly different tracklist and ends with an even bigger bang, the aforementioned "He Is There" by New Creation. 

I can only imagine what a massive task it must have been to find these gems. Subliminal Sounds deserve all credit possible for not only excavating them, but to construct an album that is, for the most part, rewarding to a point basically no original Xian album is. It's perfectly fine to settle for “Frälst!”, but if you dare going trawling through the flea market crates that God forgot to find more of this stuff, it's a brilliant starting point to set you off.

Full album playlist on Bandcamp