SHADOWLANDS

Glass Hammer is one of the well known symphonic prog acts from USA. With a career who begun in 1992, Glass Hammer manage to come with some respectable albums across the years, one of them I think is Shadowlands from 2004. The masters behind the band are the two Fred Schendel and Steve Babb who are responsable for composing the music and aswell on some albums they play on all instruments. This release is considered among their best, the symphonic arrangements very similar with Yes or Starcastle let's say but with their own twist are very rich and bombastic in places. I'm not a big fan of the band, but I do appreciated the talent of the musician involved and the overall atmosphere, but in the end something is missing to really satisfy me big time. Only 5 pieces here, but lenghty, complicated, elaborated with plenty of keyboards , the guitars are more then ok and very good bass lines. My fav are the second track Run Lisette with a mid temp instrumentation and the last track of the album the longest one and most powerfull from that period Glass Hammer ever done Behind The Great Beyond , nearly 21 min of great symphonic prog as must sound this music. So, a fairly decent album that desearve attention from prog lovers, for me was a pleasent ride, but I can't say I'm overly impressed bif time, still good from start to finish, even the cover of Dan Fogelberg - Longer from album Phoenix from 1979 is decent. 3 stars rounded up to 3.5 because of those two pieces mentioned above, the rest are also good but not fantastic. A band to be checked with regularity because they prove they are able to come with good albums.