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Glass Hammer are a band that undergoes gradual rather than dramatic change. The fact that this change has generally been improvement means that this, their seventh studio album, is a very impressive effort, and dwarfs their debut Journey of the Dunadan. Having released a concept album in the epic story mode previously, the band takes a step back and releases an album of five unrelated songs. Narrative form does, however, make an appearance in the song "Run Lisette", which concerns the unusual story of a French lieutenant and his bloodthirsty horse. Also unusual for Glass Hammer is the fact that they have included a cover. The decision to cover the Dan Fogelberg song "Longer" certainly raised a few eyebrows, including mine, but they managed to make the song their own with an inspired arrangement. Musically, this album takes up where Lex Rex left off, but now when I hear echoes of the Big 6 it tends to of post-Gabriel Genesis or Yes from The Ladder. The album is largely keyboard driven (no surprises there), with judicious applications of Mellotron and a very expensive pipe organ. The female vocals are good, notably those of Stacie Bogdanowicz, and Babb and Schendel seem to be improving in their judgment as to when they are best applied. The most notable improvement, though, is in the guitar work of Fred Schendel: he has gone from a keyboardist who is serviceable on the guitar to a genuinely good guitarist in his own right. Criticisms? Well, there are possibly a few small ones from me. The music does not strike me as having enough dynamic variation, leading to a sense of "sameness" that was not present on some of their earlier albums like Perelandra. Also, the multiple vocal lines in "Run Lisette" tend to interfere rather than blend with one another. Minor quibbles aside, this is a great Glass Hammer album. The keyboards are brilliant, the best track is the twenty minute epic, the song writing is very strong, and the album title references C.S. Lewis. If you liked Lex Rex you will like this; if you haven't heard Glass Hammer, before this is a good place to start, and if you haven't heard anything by them since On to Evermore, it's time to see how much progress they've made in the intervening years. review by Conrad Leviston — 2-16-04 —