Search - Gentle Giant :: Power & The Glory

Remaster sounds pretty good overall although the bonus title

Wayne Klein | My Little Blue Window, USA | 02/07/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A vague concept album inspired by Graham Greene's novel of the same name (that focuses on the abuse of power, religion and corruption) "The Power and the Glory" followed in the wake of the band's "In A Glass House". Unfortunately, the band had lost some of its momentum in the U.S. when Columbia Records (their U.S. label)elected NOT to release "In a Glass House". With a new label (Capitol at the time), "The Power and the Glory" managed to skirt the bottom end of the charts.



The remaster from Alucard (the band's own label)in some ways improves on the DRT; "Glory" doesn't sound quite as harsh here as on that reissue (the original Capitol release sounded extremely good with a smoother analog feel). Fred Kervorkian has used some compression and different e.q. choices on this remaster. The resulting album is something of a compromise with better, richer detail than before but the use of specific band compression also means that the CD sounds less "natural" than the previous Capitol version. Dynamic range is mostly kept in tact which is a good thing and the remaster isn't brickwalled as many remasters are. There is limiting applied as well as some denoising (at the request of the band) but it isn't as obtrusive as I thought it would be. The best comparison I can think of is that this shares a lot of assets and drawbacks as The Beatles remasters.





The one drawback is that this reissue along with the others that were previously on DRT have had all the bonus tracks removed. For some albums such as "Free Hand" that might not be all that big a deal since they were live recordings but "The Power and the Glory" DID feature the previously withdrrawn title trackthat the band had recorded under duress as a possible single and for possible inclusion on the album. If it HAD been released when this album was, I suspect "Glory" would have sold better since the title track has a catchy riff and melody that would have earned it airplay on FM and perhaps even some AM radio stations at the time. Eliminating that track from this reissue was a mistake even if the band felt it wasn't a great song.



Overall the sound quality is pretty good for a reissue particularly in light of what passes for a "remaster" today with harshly compressed, dynamically squashed sound. Even if this edition of "Glory" is missing the bonus title track, this version is an improvement on the DRT with much better e.q. choices and a less harsh sound. The detail is crisper, sharper here than the Capitol version of this CD which more than likely didn't use the original mastertape (this reissue does). All hype aside (there's hype on the back of this about it being mastered at 24 bits but the album still had to be dithered down to smaller bit size for Redbook CD), this does best the DRT and in my humble opinion does sound better than the Capitol version even if that verion is warmer sounding simply because a better source tape was used for the mastering.



Cautiously recommended because of the missing bonus tracks. "The Power and the Glory" isn't Gentle Giant's finest album but it holds up remarkably well 35 years later."