SEAS OF CHANGE

Since I fell in love with Galahad's 'Empires Never Last' album of 2007 I've been going through their discography. Their latest record 'Seas of Change' was also released on vinyl, and I was really willing to give this album a fair chance. I must however admit I find this album very hard to appreciate.

Galahad is known for its neo-progressive style with a distinct electronic sounds (sometimes almost trance-genre like) and its gentle metal guitars. On this album guitarist Roy Keyworth is replaced by Lee Abraham, which has lead to a way less guitar-driven rocksound.

The symphonic opening parts with added political speech fragments (for instance by G W Bush) never seem to end. When the guitars finally kick in, they sound mandatory and without the usual urgency. Galahad has always displayed a lack of adult understanding of world politics in its lyrics, but here the naive pretentiousness really becomes a terrible burden on the music. After the ten minute intro the band just partly succeeds to pick up its pace its known for. The lack of real catchy and interesting ideas becomes immanent and the orchestrations by keyboardist Dean Baker and additional wind-instruments by Sarah Bolter can't save the day. At its core, good progressive rock needs solid interesting ideas.

On 'Battle Scars' and 'Beyond The Realms Of Euphoria' the band got away with its rather simplistic brand of progressive rock because it could still rely on its solid song-writing ideas and thriving heavy guitars. On this album there's simply too little left to reward the band with even a three star rating, in my opinion.