JOURNEY OF THE DUNADAN

I was very curious to listen to GLASS HAMMER's first release since this was a so called ''love or hate'' album...Well,things aren't exactly as it has been said or written,this is just a mediocre or if you like an uneven effort...The album refers to J.R.Tolkien's trilogy but such ambitious concept efforts are in danger just to end in bad reviews and comments...and that's what happened to GLASS HAMMER who were then a inexperienced band and this one was their first album...

Half about of the tracks of the album are just dull and without any reason of existence with some folk elements,some poetic lyrics and vocals,medieval elements and bad ballads that simply shouldn't exist and push the whole effort one level down...The rest of the tracks are at least decent and well arranged...Lying between symphonic prog and heavy prog,fortunately they add a progressive flavor to the disc with influences coming out of KANSAS (mainly) as well as MAGELLAN,GENESIS and RUSH...On these tracks it's where the band shows it's talent and gives promises for a better future (as it happened...).

So the true rating must be about 2.5 stars if we assume that the bad tracks can't get over 1 star and the rest of them are lying between 3 and 3.5 stars...Not a bad album but a very uneven one with some really good but also some really bad and dull moments...