siLLy puPPy GALAHAD has become one of the better known bands to fall into the broadening neo-prog section of the progressive rock universe in the 21st century but the band actually started all the way back in 1985 as a seven-piece band inspired by the usually prog revival suspects such as Twelfth Night, IQ, Pendragon and of course Fish era Marillion. The band actually started out as a cover band playing everything from symphonic rich prog like Genesis to more crossover prog and classic rock such as Led Zeppelin and Rush. Lead singer Stuart Nicholson readily admits that the whole project was only put together for fun and that nobody in the beginning was the least bit concerned with any sort of professional career to emerge out of it. In a similar storyline of Steven Wilson and his Porcupine Tree project, GALAHAD gradually garnered enough attention by their contemporaries and ended up playing live with some of the neo-prog heroes they were emulating.

All of this turning of the tides forced the band to take their project more seriously as they found themselves in an unforeseen trajectory. Around 1990 the band started to realize that they might have a real musical career in their future and began to craft what would become their first album NOTHING IS WRITTEN which emerged as was an independent release. This debut was pretty much a DIY enterprise as it was self-financed, self-produced and self-promoted and despite the poor quality in both production and performance managed to sell several thousand albums which was enough impetus to launch the band’s career into the next level. While the band’s lineup has changed substantially throughout the decades. Three members: vocalist Stuart Nicholson, guitarist Roy Keyworth and drummer Spender Luckman have been with the band since the beginning album.

Anyone who is familiar with the later works such as the excellent “Empires Never Last” or their other modern day albums that incorporate a heavy guitar heft to the mix will be quite underwhelmed by what lackluster performances are displayed on NOTHING IS WRITTEN. Although i rarely agree with harsh vitriol dished out by the critics, this one is often cited as uninspired and down right bland with too many derivative aspects lifted from the 80s neo-prog movement without adding anything original. In the case of NOTHING IS WRITTEN, i would have to completely agree with every single word. This is indeed one of the most carbon copy and paste examples of a neo-prog i’ve ever heard all dished out in the most generic fashion possible.

Think of this one sitting more in the territory of the IQ album “Are You Sitting Comfortably?” Like that turkey of an album, NOTHING IS WRITTEN’s material lies somewhere between bland 80s AOR and the weakest aspects of neo-prog all the while offering boring cliche melodic and instrumental performances. Likewise Nicholson sounds more like a tired has been who has ruined his voice through too much touring throughout the years. Clearly the focus of the band had changed but the talent was still on amateur mode at this point and when hearing this debut release at the time, it would have been impossible to predict that GAHALAD would actually get their act together and become one of the major players in the neo-prog world. While i’m usually pretty lenient on early albums because they often provide some sort of interesting origins, this one is truly a mess in every way and should be completely avoided by all but completionists.

Warthur Just as much as on Battle Scars, and perhaps even more so, Beyond the Realms of Euphoria showcases just how much of an asset keyboardist Dean Baker is to Galahad. This isn't to say that the other band members (including the late Neil Pepper, who would pass away from cancer shortly after the sessions which yielded both albums) don't pull their weight - they're fully present and churning out fairly straight ahead neo-prog performances, with Roy Keyworth in particular serving up some electrifying guitar on this one - but it's Dean's command of different synthesiser and keyboard styles from modern approaches influenced by dance music (!) to more classically neo-prog modes which makes this diverse and intense release from the band worth a listen, even if it's a bit too unfocused to be a keeper.

Warthur The first of two Galahad studio albums for 2012, Battle Scars offers a dark, occasionally heavy version of the Galahad sound which adds impressively modern electronic beats to their otherwise standard neo-prog approach. Recorded with the aid of Karl Groom at Arena's Thin Ice Studios, something of the darkness of Arena's Contagion creeps in during the more guitar-heavy moments, whilst Dean Baker's very modern approach to keyboards this time around offers up sounds and textures of a sort not usually found in neo-prog. Despite the presence of a remake of an old track from Sleepers as a bonus track, this is clearly a band with one eye on the future and who are attempting even twenty years after their debut to refine their sound, and the end result is entertaining enough but doesn't feel especially focused.

Warthur Some bands, like Marillion or King Crimson, burst onto the scene with a high-quality debut album which shows them having already ironed out the wrinkes on their sound and at the top of their game. Other bands, like Yes or Van der Graaf Generator, might let a lesser album or two slip out before it all comes together and they finally put out an album which represents a creative breakthrough for them (such as The Yes Album or The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other). Some bands are mere also-rans who put out a few OK-ish albums but either break up before putting out something truly brilliant or prove in the long term to just not have it in them to produce something really earth-shaking.

But I don't think I'm aware of any bands who've had quite the career trajectory that Galahad have had. For well over a decade, Galahad put out music which at its best was alright but not exactly essential neo-prog, and at its worst was a tediously derivative waste of time. Then, all of a sudden, it all comes together for them around fifteen years after their debut album! Perhaps they just needed the right inspiration - Empires Never Last is clearly motivated by the band members' disquiet about the direction of the War on Terror (the GWB quote cropping up here and there should convince even the most sceptical on that point) - but either way, they've put out a fascinating neo piece which combined melodic rock with some harder-edged passages. Frontman Stuart Nicholson might not be the most characterful vocalist, but what he lacks in personality or distinctiveness he makes up for in anger and other heartfelt emotions.

It's not perfect - This Life Could Be My Last outstays its welcome a little bit (and traipses towards slightly uninspired Dream Theater mimicry at points) - but it's a far better album than I ever expected to get from Galahad, so bravo to them. It's still not 100% to my taste - I think it's trying to do an awful lot sonically, but doesn't quite stitch it together into as cohesive a whole as it could, and some of the compositions as I say outstay their welcome, but it's about as good an effort as I have heard from Galahad.

Warthur Galahad's debut album showcases a band whose ability to mimic the sound of early Marillion is, for the most part, uncanny. Stuart Nicholson is rather the weakest link - he doesn't try to emulate Fish's vocal delivery, which I think is a wise choice; his own individual singing style really isn't up to much, and I don't get the impression it'd be improved by mimicry of Mr Dick's theatrical style! On the other hand, the rest of the band are somewhat better at emulating the Marillion style - in particular, Roy Keyworth has Steve Rothery's guitar style down cold.

This is not enough, however, to obscure the one aspect of early Marillion the band cannot emulate: their creativity. Sad to say, but this is one of the most uninspired and derivative collections of neo-prog songs I've ever heard, and the band simply never add enough of an individual twist to the album to really make it stand out amongst any of the many others who've ploughed this over-farmed furrow. There's simply no reason me to give Nothing is Written another listen when I could just put on Script For a Jester's Tear again.