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Pure Rock Records
by Craig Hartranft, 07.18.2013
Gallow's Pole might not realize how appropriate or possibly ironic the title of their seventh album is, And Time Stood Still. These lords of heavy rock and riffs stray little from their Seventies proto-metal roots or the character of most recent efforts.
As usual, most everything on this recording revolves around the vocals of Alois Martin Binder, along with mountains of riffage from his and Harald Pikasky's guitars. It a wall of sound really, and ubiquitously the same from the title cut, Summer Rain, Older, Here and There, I Don't Wanna Go, and Holy Nights.
On a song like that last one, heaviness palatable and the pace chugging, nearing stoner or doom rock. Yet this is the character of Gallow's Pole's music, the path they continue to tread. Thankfully, most songs are enlivened by some terrific solos that swing between eerie to psychedelic. The exceptions to the rule of heaviness come with Rock This Town, which actually 'rocks' with a toe-tapping groove, and the piano driven ballad Take Me to Heaven. A song that struggles to get out of heady heaviness is Summer Rain, mostly because back up female singer Elsko's vocals add some tenderness to the song. Fundamentally, then, with And Time Stood Still, Gallow's Pole keep the heavy rock mothership on course.
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With And Time Stood Still, Gallow's Pole keep the heavy rock mothership on course.
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