GRAND GENERAL

I have listened to "Grand General"'s record Grand General which was released this year. It is a Norwegian jazz rock band made up by Trond Frönes on bass, Kenneth Kapstad on drums, Even Helte Hermansen on guitar, Erlend Slettevoll on keyboards and Ola Kvernberg on violin and viola and this is their debut record. The cover picture is cubistic and shows a skull.

Grand General plays heavy instrumental melodical jazz rock. I got a feeling that this music is very progressive and perhaps one of the best nowadays, more sympathetic than many other genres. What makes this good is especially the violin and viola which stands for a folk music inspired melodical soundscape. Especially the two first songs has big inspiration from the Scandinavian folk music. The first two tracks are perfect: "Antics" and "The Fall of Troy" (both 10/10). Even the names are sophisticated and give a glimpse of the glory in these tracks. "Clandestine"(4/10) is a boring track that destroys something but "Tachyon"(7/10) is cool, both brutal and melodical. "Ritual" is a good but quite boring track(6/10) and finally "Red Eye" is a great final(8/10) of this album.

The record is rather uneven and that's a shame. Four great tracks and two quite bad make up the album. As a whole I find the result enjoyable and very interesting. Thank you for the fine music. Four stars!