Saturday 4 November 2017

Gentle Knife - Gentle Knife (2015)


The debut album from this Norwegian band.

Gentle Knife was a ten piece big band with a lineup of guitars, woodwinds, flute, keyboards, bass, drums, synths, percussion and vocals. Both male and female English vocals.

The band has just secured themselves a slot on the 2018 Prog festival at Loreley in Germany and is rightly regarded as one of the best bands in Norway right now. That is also based on their second album. An album I will review next week/you will find my review of that album somewhere else in this blog.

Gentle Gi... sorry, Gentle Knife is a progressive rock band. It is obvious that Van Der Graaf Generator has been a bit influence on this album. You can hear that on the saxophone and some of the dissonant sounds the band makes.

There is also a lot of gentle prog here with both female and male vocals. Genesis springs to mind. So does Jethro Tull too. But not much. There is also a lot of Pink Floyd in their sound. But most of all; there is a lot of Norwegian melody traditions too in their music. A bit folk rock, yes. But also the X factor Norwegian identity.

The album is one hour long and it starts with a triumphant, bombastic piece of symphonic prog which does not represent the rest of the album..... style wise. But this very good piece of music called Eventide still gives an indication of what to expect here. One hour of very good and exciting progressive rock.

This is indeed a very good album and one to really cherish and check out. Go so forth....

3.5 points    

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