| Artist: | Galahad |
| Title: | Year Zero |
| Label: | Avalon Records GHC08 |
| Length(s): | 56 minutes |
| Year(s) of release: | 2002 |
| Month of review: | [10/2002] |
| 1) | Year Zeroverture | 4.45 |
| 2) | Belt Up | 3.46 |
| 3) | Ever The Optimist | 3.43 |
| 4) | The Charlotte Suite | 1.07 |
| 5) | Haunted | 4.21 |
| 6) | Democracy | 9.53 MP3 or RealAudio |
| 7) | Baroque And Roll Dementia | 2.26 |
| 8) | A Deeper Understanding? | 3.52 |
| 9) | The Jazz Suite | 1.42 |
| 10) | Take A Deep Breath And Hold On Tight | 1.36 |
| 11a) Hindsight 1 - Piano And Clarinet | 2.14 | |
| 12a) Hindsight 2 - A Very Clever Guy Indeed | 5.41 | |
| 12) | The September Suite | 3.45 |
| 13) | World Watching | 2.26 |
| 14) | Deceptive Vistas/Postscript - Perspective | 4.44 |
Belt Up is based on a rocky riff, with mellotron supporting, as well as vocals. Quite different from the overture, but equally good.
Ever The Optimist has an African sounding chant, pretty slow, with keys and guitars in support. This gives way to a very nice guitar solo, ending the song into The Charlotte Suite, which starts (electronic) church organ with a far more western sounding chanting.
Haunted starts with one of those Rhodes electric pianos you heard so often in the seventies, with vocals. As the track takes off the piano is exchanged for a Hammond sound with some nice guitarring.
Democracy starts with tranquil sounds, slowly leading into the addition of guitar and rhythm. Parts of this track have a very trancy feel, but there's also some oriental influences, apart from the likely ones.
Baroque And Roll Dementia starts as seedy as its title would suggest it to be, with hardrocky riff and flat drums. As it progresses it turns into something pretty okay, though, filling out a bit instrumentally.
A Deeper Understanding is sort of groovy, with vocals reminding me too much of Jon Anderson for comfort. Not one I like. We move into The Jazz Suite, which is, well, pretty bad, really: bad drumming, pabada-ing vocals, like one of those terrible seventies jazz ditties.
Take A Deep Breath obliterates its seedy predecessor, with steaming guitars, hefty mellotron and good vocals. Very nice.
Hindsight 1 - Piano And Clarinet is a piano and clarinet (now, there's a surprise) duet. Pretty tranquil, pretty nice. For the second part the clarinet leaves for the occasional flute, but this is mostly piano vocal, sparsely accompanied, until we move into the guitar section. Nice one, once again.
The September Suite sounds pretty orchestral, with some church organ at the end, even. Nice stuff. World Watching fits onto to this rather well.
Deceptive Vistas is the grand finale you might expect it to be. Going out with a bang.