Side A:
Side B:
Believe it or not, but there was a time when the very existance of this LP was considered a myth. In all due fairness, this was also around the time when the Ahat LP was considered Very Rare, but Айсберг does remain an East European top rarity to this day, probaby only surpassed by the infamous Milena & Era LP in Bulgarian elusiveness, but that one's only about one third Metal, so it hardly counts. Exactly as to why some of these state-owned label releases became so impossibly scarce while others didn't is a bit of a mystery, as the original editions were usually quite large. Perhaps somewhere out in the countryside of central Bulgaria there lies a derailed train-cart full of Iceberg-LPs just rotting away in a crevasse?
Not at all a very deserving end this LP, as Iceberg's biggest crime against Metal-humanity is merely that they were not quite as good as Ahat. Or Impulse.
Or Er Malak, obviously, but it really is a very solid 'Foreign Metal' album. It has all the low-key melancholy and mood you could ever ask for in a East-Euro Metal recording ...and also some of its classic flaws, i.e. ugly and incomprehensable (kült, at best) cover art and a very thin production. The keyboards and snare are way up in the mix and the guitars are weakling baby butterflies in comparison to most of its western counterparts. The vocals are excellent though, with just right amount of subtle reverb - all in all, Classic Eastern Steel!
The solemn "Ballad About The Hobo" sets the mood perfectly and is proof you really don't need a fast, double-bass-pedal attack to open and introduce an album - sometimes a sombre Hard Rocker is quite enough. We still get our Steel's worth in the following "Doors", smattering along like the best Citron
or Impulse tunes. The album continues with the usual ups and downs, the decent melodic HR tunes, the ballads no-one asked for and That Fast Song inbetween, but it's with the last 4 tracks that the album starts to shine its black light again. "No Trace Road" is a Priest'y, uptempo hit beamed through a smokey Balkan prism, the pounding "Destiny" would have walked proud among the best of tunes from the Ahat debut, "The Old Musicians" is perhaps my fave song of the album with its perfect goosebumps-harmonies in the style and class of the best Magnit/Credo or Aria-tunes (that trademark Мелодия-Metal sound) and at the very end we get the lovely "Love" which turned out to be anything but a useless schmallad but instead an excellent Heavy/Power number. The chorus may be a complete rip-off of Metal Church's "Ton Of Bricks" (!) but the sheer unexpectancy of such a move makes it even more enjoyable.
Unfortunately their following 2 albums were only released on cassette and for a vinyl-nazi like myself that's a damn shame, as what I've heard from those sounded quite awesome. Lets cross our fingers the vinyl-reissue-fad reaches Bulgaria before the end of the decade..