It’s all here. From the rough-edged skronk and hook Colour Haze bring to opener “I Won’t Stop” and the snare-popping bounce of “Roses,” to the 11-minute build of “Plazmakeks” to the jammy mellow-psych expanse of “Sundazed” and the 18-minute “Weltraummantra,” the boogie of “2 + 7,” to the two-minute “Other Side” among the harder-hitting tracks the band had written since their debut and the burgeoning progressivism of “Where the Skies End,” 2003’s Los Sounds de Krauts (reissue review here) is an album I can’t and won’t pretend not to love. Originally released through Nasoni Records on vinyl, it is also Elektrohasch Shallplatten‘s first release, the label founded by guitarist/vocalist Stefan Koglek that would soon enough become a home not only for Colour Haze, but also My Sleeping Karma, The Machine, Hypnos 69, Saturnia, Rotor, Sungrazer, The Kings of Frog Island, Josiah, Ugh!, early Causa Sui and others. A landmark on multiple levels, then.

Los Sounds de Krauts was the album that introduced me to Colour Haze, back when I was a beardless lad doing college radio at WSOU, finding my way into the heavy rock underground with StonerRock.com and its companion All That’s Heavy store as study aides, and listening now, 23 years later, it still feels like it’s teaching you about the world the band are making, its warmth of tone, its expressive changes in mood between “Sundazed” and “Plazmakeks” or “Where the Skies End,” the way it makes 90 minutes evaporate with its cross-album 2LP/2CD flow, breaking up along its four sides labeled “Westen, Suden, Osten, Norden” for the four cardinal directions, the second platter even more expansive than the first with “Weltraummanta” on side C and the 17-minute penultimate jaunt “Overriding” ahead of the two-minute lullabye closer “Schlafied” on side D. To this point, even with the run they’d been on since 1999’s Periscope (discussed here), the Munich trio’s sound had not yet been so expansive or encompassing, their aesthetic soothe never so fully realized. Los Sounds de Krauts was the band’s sixth album, and it still feels like a pivotal moment in terms of the band finding themselves in the music.

As with the prior three albums and the next seven, Colour Haze was at this point comprised of Koglek, bassist Philipp Rasthofer and drummer Manfred Merwald, and they continued to work with original drummer Tim Höfer (also of the aforementioned Ugh!) as producer/engineer as they pushed themselves forward to what was new ground for them and for heavy rock more generally. The accomplishment here should not be minimalized, and while plenty of others in the international underground had made a place for themselves in the post-stoner heft and sludge around the turn of the century, Colour Haze defied the burl and chestbeating and dudely posturing of the day in favor of something entirely more sonically rich. Apart from Jimi Hendrix, the band I most often see them compared to is Cream, and I have to say, Cream wish. Los Sounds de Krauts flows in its complexity — which isn’t to say splendor, but that’s very much what I mean — with a prescient grace and a scope that opens wider in its 90 minutes than many bands do in an entire career. Its songs are gorgeously in conversation with each other, whether it’s “I Won’t Stop” — which is eight minutes long and feels like about half that when you listen — and “Other Side” or the jammier reaches of “Zen” and “Weltraummantra,” and thematic celebrations of love and nature could hardly fit better the depth that Colour Haze were able to bring to their approach by this time.

Even in “Overriding,” which feels like it’s letting go into a moment of improvisation as it moves through its second half, they push onto new ground, incorporating Hammond as a feature alongside the guitar, bass and drums, and throughout the record’s span, Koglek can be heard employing a range of vocal styles to suit different sounds, from the Monster Magnet-y “Other Side” and the throatier delivery of “I Won’t Stop” to the lower-key take in “2 + 7” and the outright soothe of “Schlafied,” on and on, changing in mood to accompany what’s happening instrumentally in a given track, and moreover, doing so with confidence hammered out over the band’s prior records. Los Sounds de Krauts is a clear point of emergence, of declaration, and while I can’t in good conscience sit here and tell you a record that’s an hour and a half long is humble, it maintains the unassuming, thoroughly human presence that made the prior Ewige Blumenkraft (discussed here, reissue review here) such a crucial point in their ongoing procession. It sounds live, and probably was recorded that way at least in part, but it also puts the audience in the room with the band. It has that sense of studio space in the sound; more Let it Be than Abbey Road, if you know what I mean.

If you don’t already know this album, I cannot encourage you enough to listen. Really listen. Appreciate the finer details of the changes in “Overriding,” or “Sundazed” and the unmistakable, inimitable-though-plenty-have-tried flow of “Weltraummantra,” and the above-all-organic feel that ties the album together like it’s something Colour Haze just happened to bust out, not as meticulously combed over and refined as it probably was. As with each of their full-lengths over the eight years prior, Los Sounds de Krauts was a forward step in the band’s overarching progression, the thoughtful development of their sound and, especially here, the branching beyond their foundations in more straightforward heavy rock — the tipping of that balance toward for psychedelic fluidity — and it is, in my mind, indespensible not only as a piece of Colour Haze‘s catalog, but one of their finest and most vivid offerings.

A note on the version: What’s streaming above is the 2021 Elektrohasch reissue, which was a remix/remaster that changed around the track and new vocal tracks on “Where the Skies End,” etc. I will gladly argue that the newer version maintains the character of the original, and that whether you stream it above to chase down the 2003 version, your day is only going to improve for having done so.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

Today is my 22nd wedding anniversary. As of next Monday, The Patient Mrs. and I will have been together for 29 years. I turn 45 next month, so this is a significant portion — coming on two-thirds — of my life. Those numbers don’t really convey how fortunate I feel to have her and this love as the foundation of my existence. Everything I am and everything I do happens because she is here.

Tuesday morning, a phone call came in from the endocrinologist who had done a biopsy last week following up on a prior ultrasound; she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. It was a hard one to take on the way out to bring The Pecan to school, and though the first word out of her mouth was “treatable,” when the next word is “cancer” it’s still what in the house we might call less-preferred. Not what you want.

She had another ultrasound on Wednesday and met with a surgeon yesterday who did yet another ultrasound and the consensus of all this is it hasn’t spread beyond the two points identified on her thyroid, which a surgery scheduled for the end of next month will remove. From there, it’s medication for the rest of her life and scans every year I think for at least the next however many, and probably effects that we can’t really know yet until we get there.

This was the part of our 40s that we hadn’t hit yet. It was not unexpected; cancer is a part of living in the world now. Half of everybody, or some shit. Like parents dying, like divorce, it’s one of those ubiquitous aspects of people’s lives that’s unspeakably awful and yet common enough to barely warrant mention. It was going to be one of us. Of course, I’d rather it was me.

We didn’t have a plan in place on Tuesday, but by the end of the day yesterday we did, and that feels better for being on shaky ground. The quote from the surgeon — I wasn’t there because I had to pick The Pecan up at school; The Patient Mrs. went to NYU Langone with a friend of hers who lives in the city who, wait for it, also has had multiple surgeries for tumors in her bladder — was: “You’re going to be fine,” which one imagines isn’t something that gets said all the time.

Still, not my favorite. Still, big feelings. I don’t expect much to change over the course of the next month until she goes in, but she’ll be out of it for a week or two after that reportedly, and that takes us into November, so yeah.

Among the comforting things we’ve been telling ourselves this week is that at least we’re not doing this while continuing to fight with the school district. The school board — which The Patient Mrs. is actually on and running for reelection; I won’t cry if she doesn’t get it and I’m not sure she would either — voted last night to approve the agreement sending The Pecan to where she is now. The Patient Mrs. recused, duh. I was glad to get that text, though, so at least it can be one thing after the other instead of everything all at once.

And school continues to go well. Like, really well. I keep waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop — and it’s still September, I know — but a ‘good start’ is more than we got last year, so I’m appreciating every day we get the update and it’s like “She had another great day and is actively engaged in learning!” Thinking of where we were last year at this point where every day was a panic because we didn’t know if someone was gonna get hit in that room of 27 other kids and poor burnt out Pecan still trying to hold it together coming off rough the end of first grade, basically picking up like summer hadn’t happened, we’re in so much of a better position now that it feels like a world apart for so much more than just the longer commute. We are fortunate. She says she loves it. She says that.

I don’t have a ton scheduled for next week, but I’ll put together a couple reviews. I had fun digging into Valley of the Sun and Iron Jinn and Bees Made Honey in the Vein Tree this week (as well as Seismic; not taking away from that just because it was a premiere), and hope to use that momentum to get a few more things written up before I actually go through with slating the next Quarterly Review, which is where some of the ‘bigger’ recent releases from the likes of Uncle Acid, Green Lung or Russian Circles, etc., will feature. That’ll be sometime in October though. Before The Patient Mrs.’ surgery, if you want to put it on that timeline.

Have a great and safe weekend. Fuck fascism forever. Fuck privatized medicine, and if you don’t think those two are connected, that’s part of the problem. The rest of everyone, stay hydrated and keep eyes on the bastards, because they’re on the move and hell-bent on making everything worse for the people who’d make it better. Sing songs of freedom and resistance.

FRM.

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Tags: Colour Haze, Colour Haze Los Sounds de Krauts, Elektrohasch Schallplatten, Germany, Los Sounds de Krauts, Munich, Nasoni Records

This entry was posted on Friday, September 25th, 2026 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.