NAD SYLVAN

The Regal Bastard InSIdeout

And then there was three…

With his wild electro-shock of Bride-Of-Frankenstein-style hair and wide staring eyes, when haunting the stage in Steve Hackett’s band, Nad Sylvan cuts a decidedly strange, spectre-like figure. It is, therefore, no surprise that the trilogy which began with 2015’s Courting The Widow, and continued with The Bride Said No in 2017, has the air of a grandly elaborate theatrical production.

The final instalment of Sylvan’s gothic romance pursues a storyline littered with vampires, victims, ancient curses, questions of destiny, questionable morals and doomed love, all of it served with a lurid splash of ‘penny dreadful’ gore. Filled with imposing, majestic themes, the album’s portentous arrangements illustrate a series of plot devices that variously involve establishing an effective creeping menace, on the one hand with cape-swirling, villainous bursts of maniacal laughter, on the other, all of it wreathed in a flourish of somewhat camp Grand-Guignol delivery.

Sylvan admits that when writing the material in-between his touring commitments with Hackett, he sends his draft ideas out to what he calls ‘proper musicians’ to flesh things out as they see fit, leaving him to cherry-pick and hone the pieces. Over the course of three albums he’s built up quite a cast of repertory players and pals to breathe life into his musical dioramas – including Hackett himself, who provides his trademark luminous fretwork to Honey I’m Home, and Govan Guthrie, who adds admirable pyrotechnics to I Am The Sea. Overall, The Regal Bastard is noticeably less reliant on vintage Genesis for its musical palette and inspiration than previous releases. This is indisputably an improvement, especially given Sylvan’s uncanny ability to emulate the raspy timbres of Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins. While novel, that kind of close reading of somebody else’s work jolts attention out of the song and, at times, is akin to a historical reenactment society recreating something that’s entertaining enough at one level, but worryingly derivative on another.

The pop ethic of the mid-tempo Whoa (Always Been

Without You) works better, even though it sometimes veers towards a composite of several other tunes that you can’t quite put a name to. The title track, like most of the pieces, benefits from the tight, in-the-pocket rhythm section work of Nick D’Virgilio’s crisp drumming and Jonas Reingold’s fluent bass, along with grandiloquent orchestral embellishments that animate the dramatic intentions underpinning the work. Although a bonus track, Andrew Laitres’ captivating setting of WB Yeats’ The Lake Isle Of Innisfree, a poem about finding one’s true self, perhaps works best of all.

LESS RELIANT ON VINTAGE GENESIS AND NOTABLY IMPROVED.