Glass Hammer
(Sound Resources)
Whereas bands like Mars Volta and Muse often have the perceived albatross of "prog-rock" hung around their creative necks...a label they honestly don't argue too awfully much with...the truth is that they should be considered "proggish" at best.
Chattanooga's Glass Hammer, on the other hand, are unabashedly progressive, with a sound that evokes memories of old school proggers like King Crimson, Kansas, or early Genesis while pursuing new themes and sonic textures similar to modern bands like Porcupine Tree. Basically the duo of Steve Babb and Fred Schendel, with whatever friends and fellow travelers they can enlist for each project, Glass Hammer burst onto the scene with 1992's Journey Of The Dunadan, a conceptual Tolkeinesque fantasy that sold several thousand copies and quickly put the band on the prog-rock map.
Better than a decade and a half later, with over a dozen albums and DVDs to their credit, Glass Hammer has done it entirely on their own. Following a D.I.Y. aesthetic with their Sound Resources studio and label, unlike their early forebears Glass Hammers controls its own commercial destiny. With the release of Three Cheers For The Broken-Hearted, their first studio album in two years, the band manages to retain its classic prog sound even while taking it in some interesting and, at times, shocking directions.
From Journey Of The Dunadan on, Glass Hammer has relied heavily on the story-telling abilities of Babb and Schendel, two devout Christians that mix faith with fantasy in the creation of epic, album-length yarns that are propelled by lush instrumental virtuosity and an overall positive vibe. With Three Cheers For The Broken-Hearted, however, they largely eschew the tall tales in favor of a darker, more cynical edge to their lyrics. Combined with an expansive sound that at times veers dangerously close to the prog-metal realm reigned over by Dream Theatre, Glass Hammer has managed to take its music to an interesting next level here.
With singer Susie Bogdanowicz adding her ethereal vocals to seven of the eleven songs on Three Cheers For The Broken-Hearted, Babb and Schendel concentrate instead on creating a rich musical tapestry that matches each song's haunting vocal turn with an equally dense and sometimes black-hued music. While the album-opening "Come On, Come On" is a wistful, almost melancholy bit of floss, the muscular "The Lure Of Dreams" mixes heady six-string Frippery with a heavy rhythmic bottom-end to tread near the metallic border.
A cover of Rod Argent's "A Rose For Emily" is a beautiful, albeit bittersweet treatise on romance and loneliness, while "The Mid-Life Weird," a lyrical story-song heavily influenced by British folk-rock of the likes of Fairport Convention, is as close as Glass Hammer comes to their traditional sound here. "Schrodinger's Lament" starts with an odd spoken-word intro that comes across like found vocals, but has a point in the context of the song which, itself, is an atmospheric mix of lofty instrumentation and electrifying shocks of discordant guitar. The busy, oscillating "Hyperbole" features some blustery drumbeats and molten fretwork courtesy of Schendel, with Bogdanowicz's vocals often crossing swords with Babb's domineering bass line and the maniacal keyboard-bashing laid down by Schendel.
Although Three Cheers For The Broken-Hearted starts out kind of dour, by the end of the musical journey both the band and the listener, as a participant in this introspective exercise, have come out the other end with a sense of renewed optimism and faith. Complex, with many musical twists and turns, moments of blinding beauty and stark bleakness, Three Cheers For The Broken-Hearted is one of the most ambitious and intriguing works that you'll experience, Glass Hammer a band with an infinitely open future in front of them.
Standout Tracks: "Schrodinger's Lament," "The Lure Of Dreams," "Hyperbole" REV. KEITH A. GORDON
