LEX REX

After a brief change in character in order to capitalize on the Lord Of The Rings craze, Glass Hammer is back to doing what it does best: blending the styles of the seventies prog masters. Here, they take the lush vocal and instrumental arrangements of Yes, and combine it with the theatrical style and relatively simple keyboard parts of Genesis, and come up with a decent album.

The concept is that we are at a performance of an old minstrel show, witnessing a tale of gods and soldiers. The vocals are often too emotive, and the Christian message, while not too heavy, does put me off a bit.

Musically, the blend of styles I mentioned above does have some spectacular moments, usually when Fred Schendel is on guitar (he channels Steve Howe on slide guitar amazingly). At other times, the Yes stylings with less-than-Wakeman-like keyboards brings up images of Starcastle.

There are ups and downs, but generally this is a worthy album.