- Genre: 'Heavy Metal'
- Release Date: '25th February 2020'
Our Rating:
With the album’s lead single premiered by Kerrang! Radio in the UK, the Dublin-based progressive metallers have been building traction nicely for their first proper full-length album.
Having debuted in 2017, they’ve come to refine a style that’s centred around attacking riffs countered by some luscious and delicate quieter passages, an the emphasis is very much on melody and the progressive side of things, landing somewhere between Oceansize and Pelican for the most part.
‘Boreal Void’ does land with a crunching metal riff and staccato lead guitar work underpins some bombastic vocal that hints at Amplifier at their space-orientated proggy best, and while there was a time in the 80s and 90s when anything vaguely prog was eschewed by pretty much everyone, the new brand of dynamic prog , riven with chunky guitars changed the musical landscape significantly and opened up new horizons.
Things get a bit Metallica on ‘Daggers’, which chugs away aggressively for five minutes before a flamboyant solo and a double-pedal drumming extravaganza drives it home neat the 7-minute mark. They don’t do things by halves. There are some shrill histrionics that teeter on the brink of excess on ‘Favourite Sin’, but a gut-punching bass stab keeps it grounded, and the final track, the 12-minute ‘Dying of the Light – Purpose Silence’ is one of those multi-movement monsters that condense the experience of an entire album into a single song.
It's accomplished, not just technically, but in the way the songs fit together, the segments transitioning invisibly, even when unexpectedly.
