CIVILIAN

Gentle Giant is here for the first time with a hard rock new wave style. The first element that retains the attention is the electric guitar: it can be absolutely razor like on "All through the night". The record is a well structured hard rock music without really being progressive: there are no more violins, percussions, horns and woodwind instruments. There are many smoother bits with not bad keyboards. The less vintage keyboards give a new wave dimension to the album. The lead vocals are very good, and the bass-guitar ensemble give the songs a pleasant dynamism and a rather impressive "bottom". The drums are really present too.

Rating: 3.5 stars