I guess I owe Mostly Autumn an apology. About two months ago their latest album Glass Shadows was sent to me digitally. I guess I’m an old fart cause I’m still used to have a real product in my hands. It just occurred to me the other day that I still have to review this. And I had to search for it on my computer. For people like me, I hope that in the future albums will still get an official retail release. Otherwise, in my humble opinion, it just reduces music to disposable sounds you can easily delete by hitting the wrong button. Glass Shadows and many other albums are simply too precious to just have a digital release. Gladly this record saw retail release on the 16th of June.

Glass Shadows is the eighth studio album by this British band. Besides their folk touch, their music is obviously heavily influenced by bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. For those not so familiar with this scene, singer Heather Findlay contributed to Arjen Lucassen's Ayreon project on The Human Equation album in 2004, singing the part of 'Love'.

The writing of the album saw band members Heather and Bryan retreating to the Lake District. Accordingly to harvest a more organic sound for the new songs, like the band's earlier material. Led Zeppelin made a similar move back in 1970 and came out with Led Zeppelin 3. I can tell from the opening song ‘Fireside’ that the music is simply brilliantly good. It apparently was a good idea to write songs along the lakeside. It shows the great musical abilities of this band. It really is a mixture of folk meets metal.

‘Flowers for Guns’ could have been easily on the third or fourth Led Zeppelin album. The vocals remind me a bit of folksinger Sandy Denny. Although the majority of the material has been written by Bryan and Heather, Liam Davison has also co-written the track 'Until the Story Ends'. This song just makes you feel as if you were walking through the Scottish landscape. The guitar solo sounds a bit like Brian May in this.

The album was recorded at Fairview Studios, where the band worked with John Spence, engineer of many early Mostly Autumn records. But when I listen to it on my computer it is hard to say whether the sound is actually really good. Even if you copy this on disc and play it on a regular cd-player, it never is of the same quality as the original. A lot of people just simply don’t get that.