Hailing from Ballyknockan, County Wicklow in Ireland and having established quite a little reputation on the live circuit from touring constantly with various world renowned artists here I find myself with album number four from hard rockers Glyder the curiously titled 'Backroads To Byzantium ' having never previously heard anything by the guys before.

So I'm actually quite pleasantly surprised as a classic hard rock type of feel and approach hits home on opening track 'Chronicled Deceit, a chugging above average offering to be fair, the tempo of the album then rises for a flowing old school down to the basic bones rocking tune in the form of 'Long Gone' that isn't a million miles removed from fellow Irish artists The Answer and will possibly shine large in the live arenas worldwide.

However at this point things do start to get a bit samey and the album starts to sound rather dated with 'Fade To Dust', being run of the mill rock played in bars worldwide.  Now at this point I think it's worth noting that for these types of groups continuing to ply their trade successfully worldwide they probably have their focus more on what they do on stage than on record sales alone and even if 'I Don't Know Where I'm Gonna Go' has a rockin' groove going on it still lacks that final essential nailing moment that a band writing honed chart ready material would have.  'Don't Make Their Mistake' is also swallowed up in a whirlpool of predictability even though new vocalist Jackie Robinson delivers a great 'from the soul' vocal performance.  The mood is mellowed for 'Down & Out', which comes over as more than a hint of a jam than an out and out album track and actually in contradiction to what I was saying earlier that isn't necessarily a bad thing for Glyder (perhaps they try too hard to write those commercial tunes I alluded to and just need to do what comes naturally...who knows?)

'Something She Knows' meanwhile starts off edging towards a more commercial direction again but although the chorus has a passable and likable element to it overall the song falls short and quickly loses my attention. 'Two Wrongs' is brought in by a decent opening riff but disappears into musical oblivion all too quickly and the songs are now blending gloomily into each other as they do on 'End Of The Line' which is maybe a bit of a prophetic song title considering my views on these fellas

The best however is saved for last as 'Motions Of Time' delivers some form of saving grace for me and shows a side to the band I honestly didn't know existed, and at last I get to see a snapshot of just what might be the bigger picture.  Unfortunately this is all too little too late for musical redemption, and I'm afraid to say it but Glyder will need to do much better than this to make it to album number five.

http://www.glydermusic.com/