THE INCONSOLABLE SECRET

Glass Hammer is one of the bands I discovered through progarchives. I was pretty impressed about the three songs I downloaded but not about all songs equally. And that's exactly how I feel about this album too. There's no doubt about the class and quality of Glass Hammer but it's one of those bands that are made to do the longer compositions, both the composing itself as also the execution of the epics by Glass Hammer are more than excellent. They have the ability to activate ones imagination through their music. Not every band has that quality but GH does and it's a great asset to their already enormous reputation.

This is also apparent in their first disk of this double album: The Knights. Knight of the North is one of the best epical compositions ever. It contains every element you may expect from a track of this length. The composition is varied and complex, has great vocals and marvellous instrumental passages. The execution is perfect and shows the enormous potential of this band. I can tell you, if you are a lover and collector of epical songs (like me) you can't miss out on this one. This track only is enough to buy the album, it's that good. The other track of the first disk, A maker of crowns is also of a very high level, second best of both disks which makes this one obviously the better of the two.

The other disk starts off with another very good epical track, Long and long ago. After this one the rest of the songs aren't really getting better. The disk is called The Lady and, coincidence or not, many of the songs are sung by Susie Bogdanowicz doing a very good job especially on Lirazel showing a beautiful way of singing. But the next few tracks also show that Glass Hammer is not coming up to expectations with the shorter ones. It will also have to do with my personal preference for longer tracks although I try to be as objective as possible on this aspect. The 9th and 10th track by the way are classical influenced, a feature of Glass Hammers music also shown on other albums. It proves they are performers of the symphonic prog in the truest sense of the word. The last song, Having caught a glimpse is not my favourite epical effort of this album but that is mainly because the other three are of an unbelievable standard. This track contents a very nice harp passage by the way, one of the many proofs that this band has almost limitless possibilities.

I actually had a quick glance at all GH-releases and their ratingaverages on progarchives and was really surprised. This is supposed to be just an average album according to the ratings so far. I don't agree, I believe this is their best ever. If it weren't for the lesser shorter tracks this album even could have scored the masterpiece rating for me but since it's also a part of this double CD and makes the whole thing somewhat less I will leave it at 4 stars but to be more exact it deserves a 4.3 or something. By the way: the special edition has some nice extra's a.o. a short film about their recording sessions.