Ok then. Hands up. Who can honestly say they’ve heard of Kooga before? Top marks if your hand is up. And if it’s not then here’s something for you to discover. A vastly under recognised mini-classic from the fag end of the original NWOBHM. If one can call 1986 that, which was the year Kooga’s sole album – Across the Water – was issued.
New Wave of British Heavy Metal might not entirely fit either. More like NWOWHM (that’s New Wave of Welsh Heavy Metal…..!) with a bit of pomp rock chucked in. Think Fire of Unknown Origin Blue Oyster Cult crossed with Grand Illusion Styx with a sprinkle of Point of Know Return Kansas. Well, sort of. It’s a tricky album to properly pigeon hole other than to say it should have been bigger than it was. It’s a storming slab of (now) re-released on CD.
Kooga were so under the radar that the US Air Force got the idea for stealth bomber technology hoping to create an aircraft that was as invisible as Kooga was to the music industry. The band (to begin with called Preacher I think) originated out of Wales in the early 1980’s building up a steady local following through gigging. The line-up solidified in to Neville MacDonald (vocals, guitar), Neil Garland (keyboards), David Howells bass) and Martin Williams (drums).
Realising that they needed to get out of Wales to grow, Kooga did just that and hiked around the UK touring and getting people to sit up and take some notice though sadly for them not sufficiently to bag a record deal until signing with a small independent French label, Black Dragon (well, at least a sort of Welsh connection – dragons and all that) who released Across the Water in 1986.
The more rock-oriented UK music press at the time (for example Kerrang magazine) favoured Kooga and the band played the prestigious reading Festival in 1987. And that’s, sadly, as far as they went as after that things went in to a bit of a decline. Some line-up changes followed, momentum was lost and Kooga was no more within a couple of years of the Reading appearance.
However, pleased to say that today you can enjoy all they Across the Water offered for your aural delectation thanks to the CD re-issue. The title track chugs along at a nice pace with some nice understated guitar breaks interspersed with those pomp-style keyboards and on it goes from there.
You’ll find it a real pleasure if you like your mid-80’s predominantly guitar-based rock/heavy metal with a touch of AoR/pomp thrown in so think Grand Prix and Magnum as well as period BoC. Like Lone Star a few years before them, Kooga were another band from Wales who had all the chops without getting the breaks. More than worthy of a place in anyone’s CD collection.
>> CHECK OUT ACROSS THE WATER REVIEWS ON AMAZON <<
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