Glass Hammer - WikiHQ

thumb|[[Jon Davison performing live with Yes at the Beacon Theatre 2013-04-09]]

Glass Hammer is an American progressive rock band from Chattanooga, Tennessee, led by Steve Babb and Fred Schendel.

Babb and Schendel, who founded the band in 1992, are the only constant members in the lineup, having surrounded themselves by various guest performers. The different lineups included several lead vocalists, including Michelle Young and Jon Davison. Originally a studio project only, the band occasionally performs live, especially since the early 2010s, but never does large-scale tours. It is another concept album, this time inspired by C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia and Space Trilogy book series. It was followed two years later by Chronometree, another concept album following a young man who becomes convinced that aliens are trying to communicate with him through his albums. Guest Brad Marler provided lead vocals for the album.

Susie Bogdanowicz, who had provided backing vocals on Chronometree, joined the band as a full-time member, while Moore stopped acting as drummer, acting solely as singer on studio works, and also as guitarist in concerts; this would go on to become Glass Hammer's longest and steadiest line-up, which would be featured on the next four albums, the first being The Middle-Earth Album in 2001, their second album based on Lord of the Rings after Journey of the Dunadan. Jokingly marketed as a live album recorded during a performance at The Prancing Pony, an inn in Lord of the Rings, the album's first half emulated the sound of a band actually performing at the inn, while the second half was recorded like a traditional studio album. The Middle-Earth Album was followed by Lex Rex the following year.

The band's seventh studio album Shadowlands was released in 2004. The following year, The Inconsolable Secret would mark the last album with the line-up effective since The Middle-Earth Album, as Moore would leave his role as full-time member following the release of the album. In parallel to these studio albums, this line-up had also recorded and released the live album Live at Nearfest and the live DVD Lex Live, both recorded in 2003 and released in 2004.

After the departure of Moore, Glass Hammer recruited Carl Groves as their new male lead vocalists, recording and releasing the live DVD Live at Belmont in 2006. After a compilation album of rare/previously unreleased tracks titled The Compilations, the band released their first studio album with Groves, Culture of Ascent, in 2007. In 2009, the band took a completely different musical direction for their tenth studio album, Three Cheers for the Broken-Hearted, a pop rock album without Groves with focus on Bogdanowicz's vocals. The album was received negatively by fans due to departing from the band's usual progressive sound; although Schendel and Babb defended the quality of the album, they later admitted that they should not have released it under the Glass Hammer name.

Davison years (2009–2014)

Later in 2009, both Bogdanowicz and Groves left Glass Hammer, and Schendel and Babb recruited new singer Jon Davison and new guitarist Kamran Alan Shikoh. Together, this new line-up released three studio albums: If in 2010, Cor Cordium in 2011, and Perilous in 2012. The albums saw a return to progressive rock, with a shift towards a symphonic rock-oriented sound compared to previous albums. All three albums were very positively received, and resulted in a notable gain in popularity for the band.

In 2013, Bogdanowicz and Groves re-joined Glass Hammer, while Aaron Raulston joined as full-time drummer on January 17. With this seven-members line-up, the band released Ode to Echo in 2014, featuring all current and former full-time lead vocalists in the band's history, with current members Babb, Schendel, Bogdanowicz, Groves and Davison, and contributions by former vocalists Walter Moore and Michelle Young. After the release, Davison would quit working with the band due to his work with Yes, although he would only be officially removed from the line-up years later.

Recent years and live performances (2015–present)

With the line-up now consisting of Schendel, Babb, Bogdanowicz, Groves, Shikoh, and Raulston, the band released their fifteenth studio album The Breaking of the World in 2015.

In 2016, Carl Groves left the band once again, with the band choosing to focus on Bogdanowicz as vocalist. In a shift from their usual recording methods, the band rehearsed the album for several weeks, in order to record the album as if it were an actual live performance. On the 2018 Cruise to the Edge festival, on which he was also performing with Yes, Davison performed with Glass Hammer as a guest, marking the first time he performed live with the band. On April 18, 2018, Glass Hammer announced their upcoming live album Mostly Live, which does not feature Kamran Alan Shikoh; they also removed Shikoh from the band's lineup on their official Facebook, stating in a post "And then there were four."

On August 13, 2018, after several weeks of teasing via videos featuring the character of Tom from their fourth album Chronometree released in 2000, the band announced their seventeenth studio album, Chronomonaut for an October 12, 2018 release. A a sequel to Chronometree, the album follows Tom "in the modern day though his mid-life crisis", as "the voices have returned and have been urging Tom to time-travel back to the glory days of the early prog scene." The release coincided with a remastered re-release of Chronometree with a bonus track.

On December 8, 2019, the band published two videos about their next album, Dreaming City, stating that "all the basic tracks are down. All the songs have their shapes and their arrangements." They stated that their inspirations included 1970s' Rush, Hawkwind, and Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné novels (the first novel in the series being 1961's The Dreaming City); it would be a concept album themed around sword and sorcery, but in a "more Tongue-in-cheek [way than] people manage to understand sometimes." The album would be set in the same universe as The Inconsolable Secret.

Music

While many musicians have appeared on Glass Hammer albums over the years, Babb and Schendel have remained the core of the band. Both men play a variety of instruments, but Babb mainly concentrates on bass guitar and keyboards while Schendel also plays keyboards as well as various guitars and drums (until the addition of live drummer Matt Mendians to the studio recording band in 2004). They also sing, although a number of other vocalists (most notably Michelle Young, Walter Moore, Susie Bogdanowicz, Carl Groves, and Jon Davison) have also handled lead vocal duties.

Walter Moore – drums (1993-2000), lead vocals, guitar (1995-2005; guest vocalist: 2005-2014)
Susie Bogdanowicz - lead vocals (1999-2009, 2013-2021)
Carl Groves – lead vocals (2006–2009, 2013-2016)
Jon Davison – lead vocals (2009–2014; guest: 2018)
Do Not See Me Rabbit (2011) – Schendel solo album, released under the name Trurl

References

External links

Allmusic band description entry
Glass Hammer Discography on Amazon.com

Interviews

Feature article and interview in Pathways to Excellence's Winter 2005 and Spring 2006 issues