These people maybe wrong though, I know - but there's a good deal of writers whom I respect that mostly describe their music as being very close to the aforementioned band. 

On another note, many a bands featured here on PA have 'low' ratings according to other sites. One of my old favourites, Franco Battiato's debut album Fetus, had a rating below 3 before I reviewed it. Personally I found that to be verging on the offensive, and I don't even pay attention to ratings

 

(Sorry for all the edits. English is not my first language.)

I haven't heard any Wobbler, but from reading reviews, I think Wobbler gets rated a bit higher because they are so similar to Yes that people just tend to think of their stuff as "extra Yes albums" and rate the albums as if they had been made by Yes in the 70's.  Glass Hammer seems to me to sit a bit on the edge; not similar enough to Yes to be accepted as a total clone, but not different enough to avoid the "derivative" tag.  That's just my impression from the reviews and discussions around here; I'm not very familiar with the bands and I'm not trying to represent any particular person's opinion.

I have to agree.

I love the band from Chronometree until Three Cheers for the Broken-Hearted, where they unfortunately became another Yes pastiche. They had pretty obvious influences from Kansas, ELP, Yes and another band I can't recall now, but they were still somewhat original. I haven't followed them since, though. I can understand why people dislike them, however, and I'm OK with it.

However I do like Lex Rex,Shadowlands and Chronomotree and I love The Inconsolable Secret which in my opinion is a modern symph prog masterpeice and a long way from being a Yes clone. Unfortunately they pretty much ran out of ideas after that eventually ditching the wonderfull Susie B and decding to go with an obvious Jon Anderson sound a like. I really don't like it but my take is that all bands have a shelf life and GH have exceeded theirs by several years. I still have much to enjoy by them including the two DVD's 'Lex Live' and 'Live At Belmont' which I play a lot. Fred is an amazing talent but I reserve the right to not like their recent material and I respect that others will like this recent material which is absolutely fine. As for the ratings of their albums ..well most of them are considerably higher than ELP - Works Volume One yet GH will never touch the brilliance of Pirates no matter how long they carry on. I think they are treated fairly. There is a lot of good music out there and GH are just part of the melting pot.

 

Sorry, I don't care for it at all. Never bothered picking up anything else they've done based on that.

Bard pretty much said what I thought. Geoff, nobody's insulting anything because it's cool. Most of the times we just exclaim we don't like things because frankly we don't like them. It's very weird I know. You'll find that most of the negative reviews are critical as well as opinionated and I see that as a good thing.  

I liek Three Cheers and have a review about it, if you'd like to check.

 

You may be right, but then I think you should start by changing this one yourself, as i think some people might get hurt by the unfrindly tone against music they like  :

dtguitarfan : "Progressive Metal fans: don't make the same mistake I made! Don't waste your time on this one!" 

 

What im saying is, it makes no sence to have a page like this, if you are not allowed to dislike what you dislike, and love what you love.

It may hurt someones feelings, but its part of the game.

 

 

I have no problem whatsoever with a band who's sound is influenced by another, as in the case of the last couple of albums by GH.  It's where that becomes outright plagiarism that I draw the line.  For me, GH are clearly not guilty on that point.   In any event I'd strongly recommend listening to Lex Rex which is in my top 20 albums of all time.  The Inconsolable Secret and Shadowlands are also excellent although even I have to say they were pretty close to the aforementioned line on the latter with Run Lisette . 

Perhaps you should listen to a few - personally - My fave is Disc 1 of  The Incosolable Secret - Especially track 1 - The maker of crowns - Excellent stuff....Can be very like yes and is very keyboard oriented....

 

Ok, I think I'll try a bit of YouTubing a little later. Thanks.

A legitimate approach; many people take the attitude that "we already have Yes (or any of these bands that heavily influence modern proggers), why do we need more copies when we can go listen to CttE or Relayer).  But you could also consider the scenario that if Yes had released ten more classic albums, you would be thrilled and listen to them constantly, so why should you be disappointed with ten albums that (to your ears) sound very similar to Yes?  (I don't know how many albums are in GH's discography, I just picked a nice random one).

 

great post . I will persevere with the recent stuff. I think we all get confused when we can't appreciate a certain album and then the integrity of the band seems under question. Glass Hammer are very mindful of the past history of symhonic prog but they are not a clone band thats for sure. However on a pure emotional level I do miss the lime up that included Matt Mendians and Susie B. The DVD's Live At Belmont and Lex Live are so much fun and I find it hard now to get that same sense of fun out of their music... and it bothers me quite frankly.

All music has notes...so all music is basically derivative from the time when "graghish" the austrialopithicus decided to blow through the shell he/she found on the beach and in doing so for 25 minutes - created the first ever avant-garde prog/ math rock epic.......

I find Culture to be an impressively well made album, while I'm listening to it I keep thinking "this is good" all along, but at the end of the day nothing sticks as really great inspired music.

 

I absolutely love IF no matter how Yes-ish it sounds, I find the compositions, arrangements and performance excellent.

 

I will attempt to address this simply:

 

Lex Rex, Shadowlands,Chronomotree and Culture Of Ascent all come under the category of safe symph style prog but nothing new to speak of. Its what I call 'retro prog' professionally done but not breaking any mould or treading new ground. Is their room for this kind of repeating of old or classic ideas? IMO yes there is but under the PA rating system to give any of these albums a 'masterpeice rating' of 5 is to totally ignore the idea of progressive rock. There must be some attempt to plough a new furrow at least and none of these albums do that. So I reckon a ceiling of 4 stars for these albums is correct.

 

I have given 5 stars to couple of their albums namely The Inconsolable Secret and Three Cheers For The Broke Hearted. My reasoning is that both albums see GH stepping out of their normal formula for at least a one side of music. The second disc of TIS is different to anything of heard before while TCFTBH is structurally and stylistically also different to anything else I've heard. So I believe these albums have a ceiling of 5 stars although of course that doesn't mean you have to like them (but I happen to do so)

 

The recent albums seem to be back to the retro thing but even more so.Therefore my reasoning is again that I don't see why they should be getting better rated than say ELP's - Brain Salad Surgery or Tarkus (checked the ratings and they are 4.01 and 4.07 respectively). So GH ratings are correct. You are still allowed to like and enjoy their music regardless of what I or anyone else thinks!

I started buying 2000-prog albums with The Flower Kings and Glass Hammer, and my first GH-CD was Chronometree. Since I love keyboard music because I am a keyboardist, I got impressed by their music.

And of course they get too low scorings !! It is a shame.

 

But... I must say that I still consider the GH-voice to be Walter Moore. Too bad he is not there anymore. Their best production was when he was there, singing and playing. And it was huge in my ears.

It happens that I do personal compilations of the CD's I have, on the overall quality of music for a complete album (i.e. high scoring when all tracks are good), and believe it or not : GH has 2 CD's in my Top-5 of all-time ! This means concerning ANY prog album ! And they are : Inconsolable Secret (#5) and Lex Rex (#2). Get that ! A competition with ALL other CD's and bands !! Of course, Moore was the singer on these.

'Inconsolable' gets high emotions going, and 'Lex' is perfection.

I also like very much 'Arianna', 'Chronometree' and 'Compilations', which has the beauty 'Alkinoos'. 'Shadowlands' is more up and down, with the climax being the last.

 

They have low outings also : 'Culture of Ascent' is, in my view, impossible to understand, musically, the best track being the 'Yes' remake ! The last two are good productions, but I don't recognize GH enough in comparison to those cited above. I would give them something like 3.8 and 3.5 / 5. They remain very good interesting CD's to hear.

 

Since both CD's of GH I love most are concept albums : watch the next one ! It could be a very big thing, even if there are no epics.

 

So, Yeah ! When I see my #2 CD of all-time getting hammered, I am shocked. But I understand that it is a world open site, and everything is possible... unfortunately !

I personally would rate my favorite album of theirs with four stars (12/15 on my Gnosis ratings). I think the points made thus far are valid in terms of their safe style, etc., but I do think they have developed their own personality. What I wonder about is why bands like GH, Flower Kings, and other retrosymph bands have their passionate fans, but by and large miss out on the general praise heaped upon other retro bands like Haken. Is it the metal stylings of the latter? I don't know, but I certainly like GH and TFK better than those others, though in my book their best is still a ways away from the best of the 70s. 

 

The Inconsolable Secret is a tricky album. When I first heard it I dodn't like it all that much. Seemed some of the warmth and magic of the earlier albums had gone missing and overall far too long and stretched out. Now I feel very different about it. Solid gold masterpeice! I just needed time to appreciate it. I did look at some of the other reviews though and it seems that many just didn't like the unconventional structure of the music rather than lack of good content. Its probably running at half a star less than it should be on its current average rating. Shame really.

 

I must mention that when I was deciding on which LP to purchase today, I took a sample listen to "Three Cheers for the Broken Hearted" and just from the sample listens, it has a total different feel to it than most GH albums, a little darker and heavier with great female vocals.  That may be my next purchase by them instead of "If" or something from early on.

 

To stay on the theme of the thread, I find that both GH and Flower Kings to usually get those 3 to 4 ratings overall, but never seem to reach that "masterpiece" or 4 to 5 rating debates (for the most part).

That's really interesting, because their use of the classic Hammond organ sound gives it more of that ELP sound than a Yes sound to me.  Of course, I am gauging "Yes sound" by the Wakeman era (1971-1973, 1977, etc.) because of his copious use of synthesizers and the Mander pipe organ...

 

Why? Because the currently active members on progarchives don't represent the prog mainstream at all - most are RIO/avant and post rock fanatics. Wierd and tuneless is great, melody is for old farts. Almost all the symphonic lovers I know who used to be on here have left in frustration at being ridiculed for liking 70s music (senile old coot, one member referred to me as, but luckily I give not a pig's burp for his opinion so I stayed). I do like a lot of modern music though and Glass Hammer are very good. Unfortunately, as you allude to in your final sentence, like IQ, Marillion and Mostly Autumn, allegations of near plagiarism of earlier great bands dog them; some do not understand the difference between "influenced by" and "copying".

 

And actually, 3.75 is a very good score so don't be too disheartened.

 

Cor Cordium is beautifull. 60 minutes that flies past not a wasted moment and on my third listen I'm now thinking this could be my favourite symph prog album of the last 10 years or so.

 

(and not touching the comment about the French , suffice to say that one of my favourite TV programmes of all time is Sharpe. Over the hills and far away....)

 

 

 

 

 

A few thoughts - the only thing that sounds like Yes is the vocals. The music is beautifully cohesive which surprised me given all the parts. There are some lovely 'different' sections which breaks it up and makes it way more enjoyable than 'If' (imo). Fred plays a lot of organ in the style of Eddie Jobson (UK Danger Money era) with a nod towards ELP on odd occasions. This feels a lot more like an album based firmly on keyboards. Not sure the guitar gets so much attention as perhaps the previous two albums but need more listens to be sure.

 

Most importantly I love it on first listen. Plenty of goosebumps and I have that nice warm fuzzy feeling that I need to get from GH. This and Cor Cordium may well establish GH at the top of the tree of modern symhonic prog bands.

 

PS Is there any chance whatsoever they could tour Europe or more specifially the UK? I really need to see this band.

I shall now buy Cor Cordium and the latest I think.

 

Well at least you have gorgeous weather , beaches etc as a consolation.

 

The Anderson style is very strong but they manage to avoid sounding too much like Yes most of the time. I love the atmosphere on this album. Its quite modern and sleek but also nods to the past without being a copy. Fred is just amazing on the keyboards and as you say there is a density and complexity to the whole thing which is very impressive. I just hope it doesn't get written off as another Yes soundalike retro album as patently it is not that.