The new album from Unleash the Archers, Apex, is truly impressive. But you already know that if you have read my review or listened to it for yourself.
Yet what I left out of my review was an explanation of the concept album’s full story extending from the first track to the last track. In that regard, the excellent review over at Angry Metal Guy is the best thing you can read, because it nicely details how the storyline unfolds and is perfectly realized in the music (which fits it like a glove).
If you’re a progger who needs an entry point through one song, try downloading just “False Walls” and listen to it again and again until you are hooked. I guarantee that you will find the excellence of the musicianship to be truly stunning.
Well, the whole album is that good. And the integrity of the epic storyline will have you thinking that this just might be the prog album of the year, because the whole album is in effect one gigantic epic song that deals in mythical archetypes. It’s so good that as you listen to it you can imagine it being realized cinematically as a full-length movie.
The only White Willow album I’d heard before their new effort was 2011’s doomy Terminal Twilight. Gorgeous, Gothic stuff, but it didn’t leap out at me as anything special. Future Hopes, however, is a gripping album, unpretentious in presentation (Roger Dean cover notwithstanding) but wonderfully ambitious in scope and sonics. It starts in darkness, then doggedly journeys toward the light — and it carried me along from beginning to end. Continue reading “White Willow, Future Hopes”→
Christianity Today had a great analysis of some Chris Cornell lyrics back when they reviewed the first Audioslave album:
“In your house I long to be/Room by room patiently/I’ll wait for you there like a stone/I’ll wait for you there alone”
— from “Like a Stone”
…
The album’s single “Like a Stone” has enough content to warrant its own essay. The chorus (excerpted above) is a strong plea for salvation and to be in God’s presence. No doubt many will be hung up on the lyric, “On my deathbed I will pray to the gods and the angels/Like a pagan to anyone who will take me to heaven.” In the song’s context, however, it seems more like a desperate plea than an actual strategy or worldview, akin to the rich man asking Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Chris also qualifies it with the contrite third verse, “And on I read until the day was gone/And I sat in regret of all the things I’ve done/For all that I’ve blessed and all that I’ve wronged.”
It’s not the only faith–inspired track on the album. The prayerful “Show Me How to Live” is fairly self–explanatory: “Nail in my hand from my creator/You gave me life, now show me how to live.” One of the album’s softer tracks, “I Am the Highway,” could be interpreted as what God is and isn’t–present in everything and bigger than we imagine: “I am not your rolling wheels/I am the highway/I am not your carpet ride/I am the sky/I am not your blowing wind/I am the lightning/I am not your autumn moon/I am the night.”
“Exploder” illustrates how spiritual freedom helps us reconcile the hurts of a sinful world, and “Hypnotize” reminds us to show love and compassion to our fellow man. The most stunning example of faith comes in “Light My Way,” which at times rivals most other prayerful anthems you hear in Christian music: “In my hour of need, on a sea of gray/On my knees I pray to you/Help me find the dawn of the dying day/Won’t you light my way.” Some even wonder about the album’s cover, incorporating the band’s logo of a fire blaze. Maybe it’s just my Christian worldview, but it strongly reminds me of an extremely huge representation of Moses and the burning bush.
All music should be appreciated on its own terms. Pop shouldn’t be a zero-sum game, in which you’re either an uber-famous celebrity or an irrelevant nobody stuck in a dead genre. Maybe we can find a little more room to praise the pop star and lionize the underground hero.
In the meantime, this pile of great new undead rock records isn’t going to play itself. Let’s dive in.
Earlier in April this year, Salt Lake City prog metallers Machines of Man released their debut single “Fractals,” as an introduction to their upcoming full-length album, for which they are currently running an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign.
Bassist Rocky Schofield tells us in the interview below about the meaning of the band’s name, the upcoming album, and more.
What made you go for the name Machines of Man?
Pretty sure Jon came up with that about the time I first joined up to jam in the very early days of MoM. I’ve personally always associated it with technology and the concept of man actually becoming more like a machine as time progresses. That could just be my sci-fi nerd brain taking over though. If anything, it does make for a great acronym. I mean, who doesn’t love MOM?
How do you usually describe your music?
First thing that comes to mind is Progressive Metal, but I hesitate to say that because I don’t feel that we can be lumped into a specific genre. We definitely have the heavy riffs and odd time signatures, but also a lot of ambient and melodic elements. We aren’t afraid to experiment and throw some curveballs in there too; whether it be a jazzy fandango, salsa jam, or a beautiful piano based composition.
What is your writing process like?
We generally use Guitar Pro to help construct our music. Jon usually takes the reigns on putting some general ideas together and then we all get the file and any one of us can add or change parts, and just kind of keep bouncing ideas around. It’s really cool to see just a few riffs metamorphose into a fully developed song.
Who or what is your inspiration, if you have any?
There are so many amazing musicians and bands who inspire me every single day. I love listening to just one instrument in a song and how it interacts with everything else going on. These things inspire me to widen my approach to playing. Video game music has always been a big one for me and some of the other guys too, and I think that shows in our music as well. My bandmates also deserve a big mention here. I feel blessed every time I set foot in the rehearsal space and bear witness to the talent these guys have. It’s also a huge push for me to always be working to become a better player.
Tell me about the creative process for your upcoming debut album.
We had a few of these songs around for a while and things were looking a bit bleak to be frank. After some time to step outside ourselves and really evaluate what we were doing and who we were, there was a renewal of inspiration and drive to get this album made. The process has been a long and difficult road, and I don’t think any of us would change that for anything. I’m glad we went through the lows because I feel it helped us really put our hearts and souls into creating this thing that has become Dreamstates. For me that’s exactly what this album represents.
Do you have a title for the record? What can prog fans expect?
Dreamstates! Releases on June 27th. You can preorder it through our indiegogo campaign with some extra goodies now.
Expect heavy riffage, sweet saucy goodness, and non stop pleasures for your ears!
What kind of emotions would you like your audience to feel when they listen to your music?
I would hope anyone who listens to this gets the same feels as I do when I hear these songs. I love being able to just put headphones on and get lost as the music takes you on a journey. Those are the feels I get and I wish that upon every person who listens to this music.
Which do you like most, life in the studio or on tour?
Although I do thoroughly enjoy being in the studio and creating this stuff, nothing beats the road. That’s the fruits of the labor right there. Playing live, seeing old friends, meeting new friends, being able to connect with people in real life and not just behind a screen is as good as it gets.
Pick your three favourite albums that you would take on a desert island with you.
Opeth – Ghost Reveries, Between the Buried and Me – Colors, and Thrice – Alchemy Index (Yes it counts as one album!)
This acoustic cover of a piece from Tangerine Dream’s Risky Business soundtrack, performed by students from Sweden’s Eskilstuna Musikskola, is simply wonderful.
The best records — and I guess by “record” I mean the standard late 20th-century long player — feel like one long song. But I don’t think this sense comes just from the record itself, although certainly most musical artists search for unity in their work. Just as much it comes from the listener, the tricks of memory, emotions of sound and a tuned mind’s expectations. I often hear musicians say that the meanings of their songs are ultimately as much up to their listeners as to themselves, and this, I deeply believe, is true: We are not a raggle-taggle bunch of music nerds, we are the song’s second composers.
Composing the life of Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam, Steven Demetre Georgiou has taken a long, and at times fraught, road towards himself. His journey, written into his music early as if he was an oracle, reads like a movie script: young man finds himself an English pop star in the late 1960s and doesn’t care for it; reinvents himself as a singer-songwriter and becomes a pop star again, this time worldwide, despite his reluctance; has a life-changing experience in the late 70s that spurs a religious conversion and exit from the stage; finds himself in the center of controversy 10 years later based on his religion’s teachings — there is regret, denial, and heartbreak for him and for his fans, his co-composers, who so treasure the peaceable and gentle music music he once made; seasons pass; twenty years on he starts making records again.
A remarkable, and remarkably human, life, full of success and missteps. It’s all there in the song “Into White,” from Stevens’ fourth LP, Tea for the Tillerman (1970). But the same could be said of any of the songs from the three albums flanking that record, Mona Bone Jakon (1970), Teaser and the Firecat (1971), and Catch Bull at Four (1972). With ex-Yardbird Paul Samwell-Smith producing and guitarist Alun Davies providing detailed flourishes to Stevens’ simple strumming, these albums largely defined a genre in the early 1970s, their consistency of sound — acoustic, breathing, mostly stripped of effects except for exquisitely executed mic placement and recording — matched by Stevens’ lyrics of personal searching and that incomparable voice. “Into White” is, in Stevens’ own recounting, a song about color, and how when the color wheel is spun it turns white. He turns the effect into poetry, surely, much as one might expect from the man who could make such an album and also paint an LP cover that so deftly illustrates his own music. The images he makes in the song are ripe with Green, Brown, Yellow, Blue, Red, and Black, as he renders this waltz-time world a temporal illusion, with “everything emptying into white.” Youth and wisdom and a turning universe reside here.
soundstreamsunday presents one song or live set by an artist each week, and in theory wants to be an infinite linear mix tape where the songs relate and progress as a whole. For the complete playlist, go here:soundstreamsunday archive and playlist, or check related articles by clicking on”soundstreamsunday” in the tags section above.
Apex is the unbelievably impressive new album from Unleash the Archers. It starts triumphantly with an epic seven-minute-plus track, “Awakening,” a heroic kick-in-the-doors and burn-down-the-house entrance that lets you know in no uncertain terms that there’ll be no nonsense on this disc, only a whole lot of awesome. It sets the right tone from the get-go, with awesome riffing over galloping verses and righteously headbanging choruses.
The second track, “Shadow Guide,” has a brisk old-school metal feel to it, as vocalist Brittney Slayes again takes no prisoners. And then the third track, “The Matriarch,” continues with the unusually high standard of metal excellence established by the two opening tracks. At this point, you wonder how long this album can keep up such a high level of rip-roaring metal.
With “Cleanse the Bloodlines,” things are still pretty excellent, but the dopey video previously released for the track has tainted the tune for me. Also, it has a creepily fascist track title. Yet it is undeniable that Brittney is positively thrilling with her vocals beginning right at the three-minute mark and with the excellent tension woven by the guitar riffage. Oh well, it’s a concept album, with a character speaking, not a statement from the band, so resistance is futile.
The next five tracks are all superb: “The Cowards’ Way” chugs along thanks to some magnificently mighty bass propulsion power. “False Walls” kills it with blistering riffs knitting together a more laid-back approach, as head-banging choruses alternate with head-nodding verses. We are treated to a most satisfying guitar solo that slips in coolly after about six minutes of preparation. “Ten Thousand Against One” pummels you with bad-cop kick-drumming and death growls, and good-cop ethereal vocals. “Earth and Ashes” mercifully lets you catch your breath for a minute as acoustic guitars do some dueling with the bass guitar, but just when you’ve been faked out, the track gets the album to rip back into you again with relentless fury. Later on, a surprise vocal duet suddenly steers us into a really sweet guitar solo break that circles the earth for a while and then blasts off into hyperspace. Whew! Next up, “Call Me Immortal” does right by any listener who seeks metal excellence. This is such a great track, I can’t believe they saved it and placed it in penultimate position on the album. How cool is that. It just might be my favorite song, next to the album opener and closer. Excellence is always immortal, and here it is too in spades.
When the album concludes with the amazingly sprawling and superbly-paced guitar-feast “Apex” (track 10), there is no escaping the conclusion that this is the very best effort to date from Unleash the Archers. They have established themselves as a truly standout metal act. Brittney slays the competition and her band mates have honed their musical skills to an apex of metal perfection. Permit me to give the apposite last word to Brittney and the band by quoting their truly thrilling grand finale of a last track: “Follow me… to Apex!”
Progarchy 