NOTHING IS WRITTEN

I bought this CD approximately six years ago (had I read the unfavourable reviews here beforehand I surely would have chosen something else in the record store) and haven't listened to it since that - until yesterday. At the time of buying, I knew GALAHAD by one track only, 'Bug Eye' from Following Ghosts (1999), and thought it was a great and indeed personal slice of Neo Prog.

And "personal" is exactly what this debut album is very far from. If one needed an album to epitomize Neo Prog from the 90's onwards as clean, derivative, diluted and clinical "second generation copycats" (considering the early Neo bands in the 80's as the first generation copycats), this would do the job perfectly. In other words, those who despise Neo in general won't like this album at all, and those who honestly enjoy melodic Neo Prog in its most typical form will probably see it at least as a very decent, if not even pretty good, album.

Some say that the synth-oriented sound is very thin and hollow, but definitely I've heard much worse. The songs are poppy and accessible and frankly quite forgettable compared to e.g. Fish-era Marillion, but none of them is unbearably cheesy or silly. Keyboards and guitars are OK, though solos could be more daring. The vocalist Stuart Nicholson has some slight Fish-influenced mannerism but not to a disturbing degree. The colour of his voice also reminds me a bit of Geddy Lee of (not the early era) RUSH. The band's musical influences probably have been MARILLION, PENDRAGON and IQ - perhaps also TWELFTH NIGHT, but this is averagely mellower. 2' stars rounded up.

My copy has a bonus song 'There Must Be a Way', which is closer to pure pop music than the main album, an emotional song with a sticky chorus that ELTON JOHN might have written.