It's tough playing hard rock in a post-pop world. Not that tough, though, on-the-up Co Wicklow rockers Glyder tell RONAN McGREEVY
GLYDER FOUND out a long time ago that for any ambitious Irish hard rock outfit, the road to success leads to the ferry ports and on to the motorways and autobahns of Europe.
This Wicklow band have won huge praise from critics for their self-titled debut album and its follow-up, 2007's Playground for Life. They have supported behemoths of heavy metal such as Dio, W.A.S.P and Thunder in continental Europe but, until they fetched up as support to Metallica last summer in Dublin's Marlay Park, they were largely unheard of in their own country.
It is a hard station being in an Irish hard rock band. You might get support from friends and family and a few pub gigs, but without mainstream airplay or media attention, you will (literally and figuratively) get nowhere unless you go abroad.
Glyder songwriter and guitarist Bat Kinane understands the realities well. There is “no way”, he says, that they could make a living in Ireland, which, he points out, is only the size of a small German state. “I don’t have a huge interest in being recognised in Ireland. I just want to make music and make a living out of it. The fact that we make it in Ireland is insignificant,” he says. “People in Germany and other countries are a lot more responsive to our sort of music. They are less trend driven. It is not about what is cool. It is about the quality of the music.”
Last year, Glyder signed a two-album deal with the German label SPV Steamhammer, one of the most recognised hard rock labels in the world, with a stable of artists including The Who, Motörhead, Alice Cooper, Saxon and Manowar. “Automatically, you have the credibility, because they signed you for a reason – because you are good. We now have people behind us who will get our name out there,” says Kinane.
And in new album Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, they have made their strongest record to date. Unlike many of their riffdriven contemporaries, Glyder write songs with proper structure, melodies and lyrics. Indeed, there isn't a duff track on the album.
The title track is a pure gem which ought to be appreciated by a wider audience. A song inspired by how the landscape around the band’s home village of Ballyknocken, Co Wicklow, can invoke ancestral memories, it is an unlikely theme for a hard rock band, but Glyder have always been serious about their songwriting. Augmented by a note-perfect guitar solo from YT’s Dave Meniketti, it could be a classic if only somebody would play it on the radio. “It’s five minutes long, it’s not really radio material,” Kinane says.
Sitting in Bluebird Studios in Co Kildare, where he is recording a solo album in the hiatus before the release of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrowlater this month, Kinane demonstrates on an unplugged electric guitar how putting in a discordant chord at the end of the chorus of the title track gives it an unusual twist. This is in keeping with Glyder's philosophy. Good music is about good songwriting, a craft which he believes they have mastered better on this album than either of its predecessors.
“Everything is thoughtful. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, we’re taking something old and doing something new with it. A lot of bands try to do something new, but in doing so, it is almost like they lose something else in the process. Sometimes it is the art of songwriting or storytelling.”
Glyder were a covers band until they got serious about recording their own material after the Vibe for Philo in 2004. Kinane is married to bass player/vocalist Tony Cullen’s sister. Tony’s cousin is Davy Ryan the drummer and guitarist Peter Fisher is a school friend. Such a tight-knit fraternity has kept them going.
The record company has only forwarded one review of the album to date, but it is in Metal HammerGermany, the biggest hard rock magazine in the biggest music market in Europe. It described their music was "multifacted, catchy and demanding", and the album as their "decisive breakthrough", and concluded that Glyder were the "hottest hope" in contemporary classic rock. Elsewhere, respected rock blogger Jason Richie (getreadytorock.com) described them as "Europe's best kept secret".
“That’s the way it has always been with Glyder,” says Kinane. “Critics have loved what we are doing, but we are so uncool, there is nothing trendy about what we do. We make no apologies for it. We play retrotype music in the style of classic rock bands; there is nothing arty-farty about Glyder. There is nothing pretentious about us.”
The launch party for Yesterday, Today and Tomorrowtakes place in The Village, Wexford St, Dublin tomorrow night.
The album is out April 26th. myspace.com/glyder. See Bat Kinane’s blog, bkinane.blogspot.com, for a video of the album’s title track
