Flies Are Spies From Hell certainly don't hang around. Their debut album, "Red Eyes Unravelling", opens with a six-second cloud-burst of pummelling aggression. The listener, caught entirely off-guard, will receive no gentle introduction from this group. And thus the scene is set for forty-two minutes of what turns out to be a combination of forceful guitars, battering the listener into submission, and elegiac piano-led elegance. "Swimming In Streets", featuring the aforementioned "cloud-burst", gives itself over to the crashing chords and merciless drumming before relenting into gleaming guitars that swirl moodily, dangerously even, as the once-burned, twice shy listener, regains his senses. A sense of control slips in as a slightly broody but nevertheless dynamic piano prods away before the song erupts in an outpouring of taut-wire drumming and searing guitars. Sneaking out of the song's back-door is "Wallow In Threat", which one again demonstrates the band's penchant for stately assurance fused with unholy explosions of cacophony. The song gradually gathers urgency through its four minutes before crashing into the last forty seconds like a hurricane through a Mid-western barn. The piano line lends an operatic air to proceedings, a pompous (and I meant that in an entirely positive way) grandiloquence that sets Flies Are Spies From Hell apart from the usual bland flurry of post-rock bands.
But just in case you thought they couldn't do restraint, along comes "Glass Light Shatters". Almost soothing in its billowy, shimmering guitar melody, rain-drop notes splatter behind the scenes and whispery cymbals sizzle out of the soupy guitar either. The overdrive comes soon enough, as wave after wave of bone-crunching guitars thunder out of the song's misty early light, but the essential melody never disappears. Redemptive piano arpeggios gently pick up the baton, underpinned by Watty's masterly tight drums, before facing off against throttling guitars that threaten to squeeze the life out of the track. Like a seesaw, the song's comprising elements build up and wind down in an endless quid-pro-quo of dynamically-driven stratospheric rock that roars and soars in equal measure. Much in the same vein, the ambient fused "Welcome Wolves" features an impassioned and occasionally extravagant piano interwoven with sad repetitive guitar melodies that at times twinkle and dance gently, and at others penetrate the almost still reflexion with ferocious blasts of noise.
"Mountain Language" is yet another change-up, adopting a breathlessly marauding approach and a heavily accentuated 4/4 beat which careens wildly into a rather unexpected tempo-change. From then on, piano and guitar battle it out for melodic domination, neither giving an inch, before flowing into a climax that sees the drums all on their lonesome, save for fearsome blasts of fiery, hell-mouth guitar.
|
"King Sly" begins with a proggishly mournful organ, as if someone took Procol Harem aside and told them that their dog had died; out of the embers, a lone guitar picks up the pieces before being consoled by the ever-present drum kit and restrained, bubbling melodies. The whole song errs on the side of minimal, appearing to bide its time, waiting for the precise moment to open the afterburners and blast-off for the heavens. Lift-off never really comes and is perhaps surprising, certainly compared to its brethren, in this respect. The final track, "King Deadener", takes the minimal build-up and lashes grandiose splendour and a severe case of foreboding to the mast. The one final assault on the ears seems long in coming as the song shudders towards the denouement. Silence plays a bigger role than normal on this one. A pathos-ridden piano, eager for one last hurrah, delivers a dramatic plea for salvation as the dread-laden introduction is dispelled and catharsis is finally achieved.
The quiet-quiet-loud dynamic has been done before, and although Flies Are Spies From Hell stay resolutely instrumental post-rock in focus, they nevertheless throw a healthy dose of neo-classical piano, an almost math-rock desire to keep the listener on their toes and a truly barnstorming sense of urgency into the mix. Regularly crossing the divide between heavenly beauty and hellish aggression, this is certainly not purgatory but rather a complex and at times monstrously beautiful breed of prog-influenced post-rock that is fully capable of tugging at the heart strings as well as the adrenal gland.
Flies Are Spies From Hell on Myspace
|
