How much are you into keyboards ? Not the first black metal band to evolve into a prog band. The opening track is devoid of any rock power which does not show up untoil the second song which for the purpose of this review will be the first actual song, sense the first track is just an intro of weirdness. The vocals are all sung. Sung with the same British pretense you would except from say Hawkwind. Synths are all over the place. It's really the intensity of the drumming that is giving any heft as the guitar is just power chord accents. It begins to float off into Syd Barret era weird. The thing about prog is it can wander off into the wonderment of it's own creation and become so obtuse we forget about songs and just become fixated on the journey.
They achieve the prog sound. They have levelled up on it for sure. But the best prog albums, like say "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" is made of really well written songs. They rule here is ...cool riffs alone does not a good song make. While this tends to hit heavy bands the hardest, prog bands are not exempt. They just use more of them. The make a labyrinth of them. Their mazes however do not always lead you some where cool. They continue through the cosmos on "Alien Lip Reading". Cosmic is certainly a word I feel that describes where they have been going. The sedate croon has a futuristic robotic sheen to it. There is more of a rock feel to the guitar of this song. It is only as dark as say the 'Stranger Things" soundtrack is dark. "Crossroads" is the first song with any sort of aggressive slant to it's rocking that resembles metal. Then it is more along the lines of Opeth. Prog Opeth not death metal Opeth. The dramatic soar of the vocals does also get a little Borknagar. The final moments of the song find it building into some what of a blast beat. Do not get your hopes up.
Things gradually do get heavier. Starting with the instrumental "the Devil's Blind Spot" . The it works from there to add intensity to " the First Ape of New Earth" . I like the lyrics to this as it hints at one of my favorite theories that mankind is engineered by aliens. It makes sense considering the concept that they wanted to rewrite the Eden story from a Richard Dawkins like slant. This kind of ambitons is what also spurned Rush. The ten minute closing saga of " Autmata 1980" I had to listen to twice to fully ingest. The first minute of which is strange analog synth noise. Then there is another two minutes of build. So this could have been a 7 minute song if the excess was trimmed. They still dramatically hover without commiting to kicking in until the five and a half minute mark. I will give this album an 8.5 , which is fair as they are good at creating sounds, song wise it is grandiose and obtuse in a way that would not have me busting it out for regular listens.Relased on Agonia Records.
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