One of the most gratifying aspects of exploring music is to be able to see how different bands, styles, and scenes interact with each other. Like a massive, breathing network, no band is an island, and every city is its own musical melting pot. Today, my gaze shifts to Connecticut, home of a progressive rock band Half Shell, who have been active for a few years . Their most recent studio full-length is their sophomore full-length release titled “The Great Truth,” and it was released in February last yer.
It feels and it’s obvious that Half Shell took time to produce an album that is well planned, well thought and well executed. “The Great Truth” is an epic journey that packs 13 songs of engaging music.
“The Great Truth” is not really a love note to ‘70s prog rock, but the band pays tribute to some of the classic influences here, most notably Genesis and Marillion. The precise basswork and bright power-riffs demand the comparison be made.
Hearing the band place an emphasis on this kind of tried-and-tested longform composition is impressive. Half Shell’s natural talents with writing, matched with the encyclopaedic interest in the genre make the least involving moments on “The Great Truth” a joy to behold.
Musically, comparisons to neo-prog icons like Marillion wouldn’t be undue. Although I’ve had limited luck with the UK band, a lot of that reservation lies in the fact that few know how to merge technical writing with melodic hooks and “pop” craft. Half Shell strike me as one of the bands that give proper heed to both sides of the equation. While they never fully swing into prog territory, keeping their sights mixed on relatively conventional songwriting, the music is significantly flashier than the sort you’d usually expect in a purely melodic act. Half Shell boost their hooks with exotic instrumentation and plenty of dynamic changes. Even if “The Great Truth” aims to hit a lot of the same marks as conventional melodic rock, I seldom feel like I have their approach “figured out.” They take a conventional palette and harness it in a way that sounds unpredictable.
Half Shell offer some great songwriting—by the end of the first listen, I was impressed to realize several of the tracks already stood out in my memory. “Prometheus in the Flesh,” which is a part of our new “Progstravaganza: Harmony in Complexity” compilation, comes across with a nice groovy bass lines and boasts one of the album’s strongest choruses, and “Dystopian Dream,” one of the most crucial numbers on the album features such an amazing instrumentation that will definitely have the old school proggers give the band thumbs up; the band’s performance is impressive across the board. The music is intelligently arranged, giving some extra meat to the bones of the already-good songwriting. Keyboards are a prominent element throughout the record and give an air of class to the music overall.
“The Great Truth” is a record that challenges and provokes. If anything, it’s that quality that makes the album as a release that will be hard to beat. Needless to say, this is definitely one of the best efforts to be released in the past year.
"The Great Truth" is a record that challenges and provokes. If anything, it’s that quality that makes the album as a release that will be hard to beat.
