Friday 10 November 2017

Gentle Knife - Clock Unwound (2017)


The second album from this Norwegian band.

The band was an eleven pieces big band with a lineup of samples, spoken words, bass, drums, saxophone, flutes, trumpet, keyboards, woodwinds, synths and vocals. Both male and female vocals.

This band actually play gigs as a ten piece big band. Which is impressive. The band is one of the best bands coming out of Norway right now and that says it all as progressive rock is now taking over from black metal as the biggest and best underground music export from Norway. That too says a lot !

I reviewed their 2015 self-titled debut album one week ago and gave that a Very Good rating. See my review here.

The music on Clock Unwound is a bit more complex and dense than their debut album. There is still a lot of Van Der Graaf Generator and Genesis influences here. They are just a lot more subtle than on their debut album. There is also a lot of Ange influences here.

The music is pretty moody, complex and varied with a lot of ideas coming into play on this fifty-five minutes long album. Ditto for a lot of instruments too. There is guitars, synths, saxes and flutes in the forefront together with the very good vocals. There are some really good guitar solos here, indeed.

The music can sound a bit unhinged. But there is method in this madness. There is a lot of the methods used in the 1970s. The music has one foot back in the 1970s and one foot in this day and age.

The result is a very good album and one that is already making waves in the prog world. That is highly deserved, indeed.

3.5 points



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