For well over a decade, Glass Hammer has been one of the most impressive and productive rock bands while remaining resolutely independent from the music industry’s star-making and -consuming apparatus. Taking advantage of that independence and the liberty it affords, the Chattanooga, Tennessee-based group led by multi-instrumentalists and songwriters Fred Schendel and Steve Babb has produced some of the most musically impressive and thematically interesting albums of our time. Releases such as Lex Rex, Perelandra, On to Evermore, and The Inconsolable Secret are classics of modern rock, while Culture of Ascent and Chronometree are likewise impressive and thoroughly enjoyable. All are well worth owning, and the band’s entire catalog, extensive as it is, is well worth exploring. Their musical and lyrical adventurousness and their virtuosic instrumental abilities placed Glass Hammer firmly in the category of progressive rock, an assessment which the group embraced without seeming to let it limit their creativity. As appears to be the case with most of those who gravitate to progressive rock, Babb and Schendel seem to revel in stretching their musical and compositional abilities and exploring far beyond the confines of three-chord rock music while always keeping in mind the premise that music should be

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