Wednesday 9 May 2012

ALL ABOUT GALAHAD

Galahad formed in 1985 just for fun playing half covers (Genesis, Zeppelin, Rush, Sabbath, Focus, Marillion etc) and half original material. Galahad then supported a few fairly well known 'Progressive' bands that were coming up at the time including IQ, Pendragon, Haze and later Pallas and Magnum.

Then, after mixing it with the slightly 'bigger boys' Galahad decided take it more seriously, playing only original material resulting in the release of their first proper album in 1991, 'Nothing Is Written', which was purely self financed and released independently but which went on to sell several thousand copies.

The success of 'Nothing Is Written' was also helped by the fact that the band received substantial air play on BBC Radio One, especially on the Radio One Rock Show hosted by the late, great Tommy Vance. The band then landed themselves with deals in the UK, Japan and Germany.

The band has now released sixteen albums including albums by main band offshoots such as Galahad Electric Company and the Galahad Acoustic Quintet. The band has played hundreds of gigs in the UK, Europe and America over the last few years, at times in some very unusual venues!

In 2002 Galahad released 'Year Zero' which featured John Wetton (Asia, King Crimson, Family etc) on guest vocals.

In September 2006 Galahad released their debut DVD 'Resonance' , which was recorded live in Katowice, Poland in May 2006.

Their next studio album 'Empires Never Last' , which features Karl Groom (Threshold) on engineering duties, took the band in a heavier, more muscular, guitar orientated direction. This more contemporary, metallic approach seems to have worked as ‘Empires’ has proved to be the band’s most successful album to date, both commercially and critically, and resulted in them winning album of the year at the 2007 Classic Rock Society awards. ‘Empires’ was also included in many music web sites top tens for 2007.

2012 see’s the band re-merging with not one but TWO new studio albums; ‘Battle Scars’ to be released in April and ‘Beyond the Realms of Euphoria’ to be released in September, plus a live CD/DVD ‘Whitchurch 92/93 – Live Archives Vol. 2’ and to top it off, an official authorised biography of the band ‘One for the Record’ written by Andrew Wild.





Over the next few days we will have Galahad Tour Dates and a multi-part interview with Galahad singer Stuart, whom I spoke to yesterday, and whom I got on with like the proverbial house on fire...

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