A sonic explosion to exhilarate and enrapture every sense and thought the debut album from US band Glass Cloud is quite simply stunning. It is an enveloping maelstrom of persuasive emotive atmospheres and a storm of dehabilitating aggression brought with an imagination and technical ingenuity to leave one in awe. When you have a band consisting of a great vocalist like former Sky Eats Airplane and Of Mice & Men frontman Jerry Roush, inventive and expressive guitarist Joshua Travis of The Tony Danza Tap Dance Extravaganza, and the supreme rhythmic prowess of bassist Travis Sykes and drummer Chad Hasty, you expect something good to come out of their union. Whether you could have imagined something as staggering as The Royal Thousand is debatable but their collective creativity has certainly given birth to something simply immense, a true colossus of a release.
Released through Equal Vision Records in the US and Basick Records in Europe, The Royal Thousand stretches then 
manipulates the ear and beyond from the first breath of opener White Flag. As guitars conjure heated weaves within the ear and Roush brings his usual impressive mix of strong vocals, the song spirals with majestic craft and incendiary energy to greater heights. The intensity it brews twists and grips tighter to evolve into a disarming rage of disrupted rhythms and blistering riffs within a warm sonic soaked ambience. It is majestic yet only an understated sample of what is ahead.
The following If He Dies, He Dies from an emotive caressing of the ear stalked by an intimidating air erupts into a thoroughly intrusive provocation of metallic fingerings from the guitars alongside rhythms leaving knees like jelly. The fusion of sonic and heated beauty with safety destroying corruptive intensity is beyond acclaim; the track is pure poetic violence and alone makes claims for Glass Cloud as the true masters of your senses.
Track after track the quality and invention is unrelenting, the likes of the quite brilliant Ivy & Wine an example of the continual ingenious dark enterprise leaving only numbed devastation in its melodic scathing wake. Even the melodic beauty of instrumental Prelude For A Ghost is brought with an eerie ambience to leave one looking over their shoulder. Midway through The Royal Thousand and the opening song seems long in the past and against what impressively followed it seems almost ordinary in comparison though that is not a word one can truly use in any real context in regard to the release.
The mesmeric creative chaos of She Is Well And Nothing Can Be Ill takes the senses on a controlled yet perpetually evolving disrupting journey whilst the following Counting Sheep rampages in corners of the heart and emotions you never knew existed with phenomenal technical guitar intrusions within an atmosphere which colours thoughts and feelings with every hue of bruising.
Closing on firstly the dark hearted Memorandum whose opening passion and play is as hypnotic a piece as you can find anywhere and finally the outstanding From May To Now, the album is pure excellence veined with brilliance. Heavily and skilfully textured The Royal Thousand brings a new and deeper experience with each immersion into its pulsating fresh magnificence and malevolent aggression. Glass Cloud leaves you on your knees but also in total bliss.
RingMaster 27/06/2012
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