The Sunset Gate (Glass Hammer, 2012)

Glass Hammer are one of the most coherent and enduring bands out there. This song comes from their "Perilous" album, kind of a long suite divided into 13 tracks, each one also can be considered as a stand alone piece. "The Sunset Gate" opens the concept, based on a perilous journey beyond the cemetery gates. It is interesting to say that the song titles, when read in sequence, form a charming poem, complying with metrics and rhyme rules. "The Sunset Gates" is a very good track, featuring a long and atmospheric instrumental intro, starting with an acoustic set, soon improved by the electric instruments.

"Perilous" was the thinteenth studio album by Glass Hammer.

When Jon Davison's vocals come in, the magic is perfect (and after all it isn't so easy to become a member of Yes, is it?) and the melodies are so well found and performed that I completely forget the slight lack of originality many listeners impute to Glass Hammer. Dark and charming, this track lines up majestic moments and confidential passages with the right amount of good taste such a deed involves.

Beyond, Within (Glass Hammer, 2010)

The more Glass Hammer went on in their career, the more they were Yes-oriented in their music. The album "If" could easily be a Yes' outtakes collection, but please take my opinion in its positive sense. This "Beyond, Within", the opening song of the album, for example, is an excellent song, both structurally unpredictable and rhytmically dynamic. All is "Yes" here, sure, but never a bare replica of the band's most important model. Take Jon Davison's voice: it surely sounds a lot like Jon Anderson's (and he subsequently won the biggest prize to be the third lead singer of Yes), but it also has its own character, more stingy and jazzy than Jon's, maybe more dynamic and certainly less heavenly.

 

"If" was Glass Hammer's eleventh studio album.

The track is perfectly balanced in its fast and slow moments and the band plays in admirable harmony, always giving to each instrument its own and well deserved space. Last but not least, the sung and instrumental themes are very, very good ones, and this is one of the best reasons to buy a record, after all.

All in Good Time - part one (Glass Hammer, 2000)

Glass Hammer actually are an excellent band and many fans consider their 2000 album "Chronometree" as their best work. "All in Good Time" fills the greatest part of the CD, split in two parts, each one a suite of its own. The first one features six movements for a total duration of 23 minutes. It's a varied, symphonic, well structured epic whose recurring themes and musical solutions show a keen study of classic era prog and also a personal and never-too-serious reinterpretation of that materials. Later in their career, maybe Glass Hammer went too much Yes-oriented, but here you'll find a well balanced inspiration feeding a richly textured music.

One of the best prog albums of the early 2000s, IMHO.

The lyrics are also worth some words. It's a rare case of meta-prog , as we learn the story of Tom, an obsessive prog fan who begins to hear mysterious messages from outer space hidden into his "Close to The Edge" microgrooves. So, he listens to it more and more and even writes down those aliens' messages about a mysterious science called Chronometree. Finally, he gets a nocturnal meeting with the ETs... but unfortunately they don't spring up. So, in the second part of the suite, Tom is obviously disappointed, but - at least - his notes about Chronometree are still there. Those are ironic and clever lyrics matching with an excellent music!