!GeRald!  – Music for broken elevators  – Gerald are back, more of that thick-cut golden shred proper prog rock, a twenty-five-ish minute EP and more of that high wire thing they do so so well. Once again lots of it instrumental although they do have a perfectly good vocalist and they do deliver an absolutely beautiful version of Joy Division’s Atmosphere as a closing track. Mostly though, beside the pretty straight forward rather gorgeous version of Atmosphere, this is real deal muscular prog rock. The four of them, from Melle, France, do have a marvellous chemistry, it rather dramatic, sometimes urgent, always moving forward, thick sounding, full bodied dynamic, they’re always laced with slightly different colours, with proper progressive adventure, always thrilling and actually, the new video as well as that old one further down will tell you most of what you need to know, even though the melodic and lyrically dense beautifully-sung five and a half minutes of The short way home could be from the middle of Camel concept album before the deliciously name Glory Whole takes us off on angular instrumental high wire adventures again. Gerald’s take on prog rock has an energy lacking in most, they’re on in it a wonderfully dynamic way (again). This time around things are maybe a little leaner, meaner maybe, focussed, economic without being compromised, although we do like their more is more approach of previous times and well, if you haven’t already you really need to go explore all things Gerald, watch the videos, they tell you far more than we can…. (sw)

A new video, filmed at the old Carmaux coal factory, March 2024 Directed and edited brlliantly by Vincent Zlotkowski, tells you far more than our words can.

Bandcamp

Previously

ORGAN THING: Hang on, holy merd (yet again), GeRald! Fire in a Madhouse, The Attack of the Giant what?! This just in from France…

And a video from three years ago…