Anthem Of The Peaceful Army [VINYL]

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Where's the line between being influenced by classic bands and being a copycat of these very bands? Josh Kiszka’s high and mighty voice – which, at full screech, can sound like an ejaculating hyena – has come in for special grilling. NPR balked at his “grating, maximalist pitchiness”, while the Times called his voice scratchy and shrill. Matrix / Runout (Runout side B, var. 3): 187353E2/A B0027675-01B MRP1782/B002767501-B B20 JN-H STERLING

Pressed further about the uncommon level of criticism the band has received, Kiszka did allow a trace of ire. “Some people are writing their articles in their mother’s basement and they’re pissed off that we’re doing something,” he said. “If your career is writing negative things about people, I would think you’d have something better to do.” Kiszka maintains just as blithe an attitude about the endless Zep allusions. “We’ve been honored and flattered to have those comparisons,” he said. “And it’s lovely that Robert Plant would speak so kindly about what we do.”Throughout the ten-song collection the band explores the duality of fantasy versus reality and the contrast between light and darkness. “We had this idea that we wanted to tell these stories to build a universe,” says Wagner. “We wanted to introduce characters and motifs and these ideas that would come about here and there throughout our careers through this world.” In fact, it’s not clear that he has. In an interview last year with Australia’s Network Ten, Plant described Greta Van Fleet as “Led Zeppelin 1”. When asked about Kiszka’s voice he slyly said, “he borrowed it from someone I know well.” Of course, such interests “made it harder to talk to kids my age in school”, Kiszka said. “They didn’t know what any of this stuff was. It was an early realization that my family was uncommon.” The E.P. stirred both enthusiasm and criticism, as for some GVF were sounding a little too much alike Led Zeppelin. Matrix / Runout (Runout side A, var. 2): 187353E1/A2 B0027675-01A MRP1782/B002767501-A JN-H STERLING

The band notes, lead single “‘Meeting The Master’ peers into an esoteric world heeded by the word of a wise teacher. Sung in the voice of a devout believer, and eventual group exclamation, the song details the love these fervent followers have for their teacher and their firm belief in his vision. It’s an exotic spiritual journey. A dark comedy that inevitably ends in chaos.” Selected items are only available for delivery via the Royal Mail 48® service and other items are available for delivery using this service for a charge. The young men also absorbed the literature favored by his father, a chemist with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. (Their mother is a science teacher.) “We had a lot of books that maybe children shouldn’t read, by Nietzsche and Sartre,” he said. “It was all very interesting.” The band took multiple concepts from critically acclaimed second album The Battle at Garden’s Gate and brought them into Starcatcher, although Sam’s take on the new record’s big ideas hint instead at new beginnings. “When I imagine the world of Starcatcher, I think of the cosmos,” he says. “It makes me ask a lot of questions, like ‘Where did we come from?’ or ‘What are we doing here?’ But it’s also questions like, ‘What is this consciousness that we have, and where did it come from?’”That mindset goes a long way towards explaining the insular world that shaped the music of the Kiszka brothers who comprise three-fourths of Greta Van Fleet. They include Josh’s fraternal twin Jake, who plays guitar, and their younger brother Sam, on bass. (The sole non-sibling member is their close friend, drummer Danny Wagner.) The musicians’ remove from the modern world also helps explains why their sonic taste falls so far from that of most in their generation, as well as part of why they have drawn so much scorn from contemporary critics. While Greta Van Fleet’s debut album, Anthem of the Peaceful Army, released in 2018, excited enough fans to debut in Billboard’s Top Five, critics treated it like a fresh outbreak of Ebola.