In June 2007 Galahad released ‘Empires Never Last’, their first album to be recorded with Karl Groom at Thin Ice Studios. The album showed a much heavier, more muscular sound than on previous releases but also a sound that was pristine and modern, yet full of energy and spirit, indeed a sign of albums to come.
The album sold well and received much critical acclaim and was even voted best album of 2007 by the Classic Rock Society and is still the number one rated album of its genre of 2007 in the Progarchives.com album listings.
Fast forward to Spring 2014 and Galahad HQ has all but run out of copies of ‘Empires’ and thus the band decided, in a moment of madness, that instead of just going for a standard re-pressing, why not revisit the album and see if it could be improved, tweaked etc. to sound better than ever before, particularly as the production and recording bar had been raised so much higher on subsequent albums ‘Battle Scars’ and ‘Beyond the Realms of Euphoria’.
Karl and the band set to work to see if they could enhance an already great sounding album, thus what we now have is effectively a brand new release in digipack form, including a couple of bonus alternative studio versions of ‘Termination’ and ‘This Life Could Be My Last’, additional art work, which never appeared on the original release, plus the album has not just been re-mastered, it has been re-mixed and, in some cases, re-recorded!
In addition, several demo’s which emerged from the ENL writing sessions but which never made the final cut, as it were, will be available as exclusive downloads for the first time from the official Galahad website at www.galahadonline.com as curious companion pieces to the main album release.
We hope that we have indeed enhanced ‘Empires’ and have managed to breath fresh new life in to what we believe is already a great album.
Oh and we’ve also included the original press release to give you more of an idea of what it was all about in the first place.
‘Empires Never Last’ is the sixth Galahad studio album.
This is easily Galahad’s heaviest, most muscular and guitar orientated album to date.
With ENL Galahad are at last showing their teeth and at times what a fine set of razor sharp teeth they are! The band are, at times, verging on Prog/Metal territory but without the hair and the histrionics!!
What we have here is Galahad the ’Rock’ band, at times morphing into Galahad the modern ’Metal’ band but still containing elements of Galahad the ‘Progressive’ band.
Although a lot darker both musically and lyrically from previous albums the sound is still distinctively ‘Galahad’.
Keyboards still feature prominently, but the band evokes a more industrial feel at times on this album with its liberal use of sequencers, effects, samples and unusual electronic sounds.
There are quieter moments, but these only serve to provide the required light and shade, there are certainly no ballads on ENL!
Empires Never Last was recorded at Thin Ice Studios, Surrey and engineered and mixed by Karl Groom who has worked with numerous prog/rock/metal bands including Arena, Yes, Dragonforce and, of course his own band, Threshold.
Therefore, as you would expect, the production is pristine and the sound is huge! Thus, the energy, spirit and attitude of the band has been captured on this album unlike any before it.
Empires also features a few special guests including Karl Groom (Threshold) on guitar, Clive Nolan (Arena, Pendragon) on fake dulcimer and Tina Booth (Magenta) on vocals.
‘Empires Never Last’ should be one of the Rock albums of 2007.
Go on, give it a listen you might be pleasantly surprised.
