THE POWER AND THE GLORY

This is an album that uses a formula that many have used years later, for the worse more often than the better. Many bands in the progressive genre tend to try to blend as many different instruments as possible, but not really caring as to what is being played on said instrument, resulting in pretentious music. This is an album that uses the formula correctly, but doesn't get too chaotic for its own good. Rather, it takes a unique approach to each instrument while still blending them together to create a common enough atmosphere to create emotion. "Proclamation" has a rather nightmarish atmosphere while maintaining a groovy-enough rythym to keep a casual listener interested.

Speaking of casual listeners, there is even a dance-type song on here (The Face), though it is so oddly structured and disjointed that one cannot think of any movement to make. But it is still highly enjoyable, due to the melody that is played on a violin that resembles funk, but keeps the classical touches of old. In fact, there are often different genres that are reflected by each instrument on an independent bases, but they all keep the progressive rock overtones to keep things to their roots without going into an over-convoluted mess.

Gentle Giant has been known for their "medeval" approach to vocals, but that aspects comes much more into play here than it does on any other album. In fact, the accent of the vocals almost sounds Scottish, which makes sense, considering the vocal melodies quite strongly resemble medieval Scottish music (there are no bagpipes on the album), while still maintained a blues/soul-rooted twist. They are also rather intricate, making a fair amount of use of the vocalist's range is quite a short amount of time, without sounding like Opera or ancient Middle-Eastern music (not bashing those genres at all).

While their previous album, "In a Glass House" may have been more complex, the melodies on each album were a bit derivative at times and they didn't branch out into other genres like this album does. This is a difficult album to listen to at first, but as times goes by, the album can be appreciated for the masterpiece that is is. This is an absolute landmark in progressive rock history from an underrated band that deserved credit that some other bands simply did not. There are no flaws what so ever, and there is no moral flaw in buying it with your money (or streaming for free).