The Shiver
Walpurgis

"The Beltane Sabbath"

In a distant era, still free from the ruthless grip of Christianity, Celtic peoples customarily thanked the generosity of nature through propitiatory rituals, celebrated during the cyclical change of seasons. The last night of April, amidst the celebrations for the spring equinox on March 21st (Ostara) and those for the summer solstice on June 21st (Litha), was one of the main "fire festivals," in which druids would raise flames in the highest areas of villages in honor of the radiant god Belenus, while herders would guide livestock between two imposing bonfires, hoping to ensure strength for the animals and protect them from diseases for the time to come.

With the rise to power of the Church, practitioners of these rites were indiscriminately branded as heretics and sent to the stake, while the deities they honored (whether called "Diana," "Mother Earth," or indicated by Celtic names) were all conveniently converted under the suggestive name of Satan and despicably linked to phantasmagorical ceremonies, in which the summoning of demonic beings was followed by depraved orgiastic dances and horrid banquets featuring infant flesh, spreading thus like wildfire across the entire European territory the shadow of witchcraft and the terror of eternal damnation awaiting sinners in Hell.

In their unparalleled ability to find miraculous solutions to problems invented out of thin air, representatives of the Christian religion consecrated the early hours of May, originally dedicated to the aforementioned sabbath for crop fertility, to Saint Walpurga, providing unsuspecting believers with a means, through prayer, to survive that occurrence profoundly corrupted by the nefarious presence of the devil, passed down and feared in the centuries to come as the malevolent "Walpurgis Night."

In 1967, organist Matthew Fisher, following the advice of fellow musicians and dedicating his efforts to that ancient and dark event, sealed the debut album of his Procol Harum with an unprecedented instrumental piece, where Bach-inspired piano interweaves impeccably with the electric guitar's soliloquies, generating one of the fundamental sources from which much of future progressive rock would spring. "Repent Walpurgis", being a revolutionary track, was then adopted two years later by a Swiss group from St. Gallen that, by enhancing the sharp guitar incursions and making the rhythmic section more incisive, managed to distinguish and breathe new life into the composition, placing it at the core of The Shiver's debut, despite it being a cover.

The importance of the album "Walpurgis" was further increased thanks to the peculiar and twisted imaginative artistry of master Hans Ruedi Giger, who, for the first time, handled the graphical design of a cover (using a theme that would continue to evolve, assuming indescribable forms), contributing to the legendary reputation of a work that, from a strictly musical point of view, does not yet have either an audacious fusion of genres nor particularly complex structures, but rests on a dignified blues rock with timid psychedelic nuances, driven by Dany Rühle's guitar. The latter appears both in brief interludes punctuated by Mario Conza's bass grumble ("Ode to the Salvation Army"), in vibrant rides on notes originally belonging to Nina Simone and brought to prominence in '65 by The Animals ("Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"), and finally in a soporific blues piece ("The Peddle") enriched by the harmonica and Peter Robinson's raucous singing ("What's Wrong About the Blues").

The other undisputed protagonist of the record is pianist and organist Jeily Pastorini who, taking place in the cockpit, directs the band by syllabizing petite choruses ("Leave This Man Alone") and gloomily lingering at the bottom of a disillusioned and religiously provocative song ("Hey Mr. Holy Man"), subsequently accompanying Roger Maurer's drums through a simple motif ("No Time"), destined, years later, to branch and blossom in the psych-progressive blues of Deaf, the subsequent fertile oasis where Dany and Jeily (coincidentally the true and irreplaceable essence of the lineup under review) would set up their tents, with only one posthumous LP of performances dating back to the period '70-'72, published under the name "Alpha" in 1994.

Even considering the archaic period during which the recordings took place and trying to notice certain feeble attempts to break out of consolidated and now obsolete patterns, it must be admitted that The Shiver managed to craft a work where the so-called "epic twists" can be found only and exclusively in the invaluable external contributions, imprinted in the marvelous face-off between music and representation, shaped by the encounter between Fisher's avant-garde compositional skill and Giger's artistic frenzy, who, during the full swing of the progressive era, would successfully translate into imagery the soul of works by sacred monsters such as ELP and Magma, not to mention that Swiss masterpiece which, through the marginal collaboration of Dany Rühle, would mark the end of the long odyssey of a vessel that set sail from the lands of Celtic sabbaths in '69 and finally docked, eight years later, on the shores of a leaden and harrowing realm ruled by the spectral Herold and the hallucinatory realities of his mysterious island.