Trollheart

Time to finish up our first trip through the Five Decades of Prog. I’ve only heard one Glass Hammer album, and that was 2002’s Lex Rex. I did not like it. This could be interesting.

Album title: Valkyrie
Artist: Glass Hammer
Nationality: American
Year: 2016
Chronology: 16
The Trollheart Factor: 1

Track Listing: The Fields We Know/Golden Days/No Man's Land/Nexus Girl/Valkyrie/Fog of War/Dead and Gone/Eucatastrophe/Rapturo

Comments: Would you believe that, with about eighteen albums to their credit, Spotify has the princely number of two albums from Glass Hammer? Just as well I own all their discography, which I discovered after vainly searching for it on the Big S! This is a concept album about a soldier’s return from the war (doesn’t say which war; with a name like Valkyrie for the album you’d think maybe Second World War but we’ll see if it becomes clearer as the album goes on) and his search for the girl he left behind. The opener has a sort of Spock’s Beard/Arena feel to it, some nice Hammond work. “Golden Days” switches the lead vocal over to a female one, Susie Bogdanowciz, and is a slower song though not a ballad. Nice use of air raid sirens in the song. Decent, but I wouldn’t personally be getting too excited about anything just yet.

Okay, well the opening to “No Man’s Land” just got my attention: very dramatic and emotional, lovely work on the guitars, very tense; not sure if it’s going to be an instrumental but we just got choral vocals so maybe. Oh no. Just checked the running time and it’s an epic - fourteen minutes - so this can only be an overture surely. There’s no way anyone does a fourteen minute instrumental. And now we’re going all Spock again and here come the vocals, Susie again. Impressive musical diversity here; changes from bouncy keyboard melody to moody dark guitar grind with mechanised voice. I would hazard from the lyric that we’re talking World War I. I’m really getting into this; almost goes post-rock at the end.

The title track opens on acoustic guitar and that mechanised vocal again, then Susie is back for “Fog of War”, a more uptempo, rocky track, while things slow right down on soft piano for “Dead and Gone” with more fine Hammond or is it Mellotron? Why do I always get those two mixed up? Gets pretty rocky as it winds up; think I would have preferred it as it was. That leaves us with the three-and-a-half minute “Eucatastophe”, a little acoustic ballad on which Susie excels, and the album closes on “Rapturo”, very powerful, slow and stately with a real sense of drama.


Track(s) I liked: “No Man’s Land/Valkyrie/Dead and Gone/Eucatastrophe/Rapturo

Track(s) I didn't like:

One standout: “No Man’s Land”

One rotten apple: n/a

Overall impression: Definitely got better as it went on. When it started I was in a sort of meh frame of mind - this is okay but nothing special. Then I started to take interest, and that interest really never waned. I reckon this could be an album I could get into if I took a few more listens to it.

Rating: 9.0/10

Future Plan: I may have to give this band another chance. With twenty-odd albums, one I found poor and the other quite impressive, I may just have formed the wrong impression first time out. Listen to more? Think you hit the nail on the head. Sorry, sorry...

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018