GALAHAD does not want to fulfil the expectations placed in it even after various line-up changes

26. March 2018

Galahad

GALAHAD does not want to fulfil the expectations placed in it even after various line-up changes

Stuart Nicholson has deleted the word consistency from his vocabulary. Because his band Galahad lives with constant changes since their foundation in 1985. Not only their line-up has changed - partly inevitably, partly intentionally - again and again. Also their style was and is as changeable as with hardly any other formation in the Prog. With their new studio album "Seas Of Change" the English from Dorset continue this tradition.

The time of disco sounds and dance/trance influences that took some getting used to and that could still be heard on "Battle Scars" and "Beyond The Realms Of Euphoria" is over for Galahad. "We always had a lot of influences, more than just prog, for example folk and hard stuff like Rammstein", says Nicholson and adds explaining: "You have to consider: When we started, many of us were still teenagers. A lot of things just started to develop."

Nicholson is into bands like AC/DC or Status Quo, he says. But for years they played more or less the same thing over and over again. Galahad embodied more the opposite: "I like the idea that people hear something but then don't get what they expected." Which in fact explains some of Galahad's discography, which was launched as a typical British neoprogband. This led to the Rammstein cover "Mein Herz brennt", which the British released as an EP. Recently they recorded their own songs and cover numbers in acoustic-folk garb. "Quiet Storms was supposed to sound softer than anything before. Nicholson celebrates: "And if Proggies said that it's not very progressive now, then we said, "Well, that's the point!

Now it's time for something else. "Seas Of Change", on which Galahad emphasize their harder side, but also again come up with (neo-)progressive elements, manages to surprise again. Not so much for style this time. Not even because of the subject it deals with (Brexit and the consequences for the United Kingdom). Rather due to the fact that the album consists of a single song. "We had finished about twenty tracks, in the end it became one. We had so many ideas, the piece just kept getting longer and longer. At forty-two minutes, we said, "We really have to stop

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