New spins…

Vertigo? What vertigo? Prog metal icons survey all beneath them on skyscraping 15th album.

Words: Dom Lawson

Edited by Dave Everley prog.reviews@futurenet.com

Illustration: Pete Fowler

It might have felt a little bit like a slap in the face for the band themselves, but joy was undeniably unconfined when Dream Theater released their 14th album, Distance Over Time, early in 2019.

A purposeful return to their classic sound after the polarising extravagance of 2016’s The Astonishing, it echoed the towering grandeur and riff-driven intricacies of the band’s most revered 21st century works, Train Of Thought and Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence, and threw some boss-level virtuoso showboating into the mix for good measure. It was, in essence, proper Dream Theater.

In truth, The Astonishing remains a sorely underrated work, and arguably the band’s most authentically progressive album overall. But both Distance Over Time and this successor, A View From The Top Of The World, suggest that prog metal’s standard bearers have rediscovered their comfort zone and found it to be inspiring as it ever was.

Time for a little more joy, then. Once again, this is proper Dream Theater, but less concerned with sustained heaviness or saluting cherished past glories than its predecessor occasionally seemed to be. A View From The Top Of The World also feels less strident and dogmatic than anything they’ve released in a while: a sign of these Covid-bothered, politically febrile times, perhaps, but also evidence the band are still determined to meddle with their own formulae and sidestep repetition at every turn.

Nonetheless, opener The Alien does seem to tick every conceivable box for longtime fans. From a neck-snapping, mutant metal intro to the grand sweep of James LaBrie’s vocal melodies, it’s an unashamedly textbook slice of classic modern prog metal, as conceived and refined over three decades by Dream Theater themselves. Neatly wonky but free-flowing mid-song solos from John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess aside, it belongs firmly in the aforementioned comfort zone, but is executed with such exuberance that it hardly seems to matter. Similarly, Answering The Call switches from fidgeting, staccato verses to bittersweet, harmony-drenched choruses, with symphonic stabs and some gritty, prog thrash riffing gluing it all together: well-trodden territory for the quintet, but revisited here with endearing, wide-eyed glee. Meanwhile, Invisible Monster injects a dose of spooky metal grandeur into a tale of a lurking, spectral assailant who threatens our safety and sanity… well, the subtext is hard to miss.

A View From The Top Of The World INSIDEOUT

"Dream Theater are still determined to meddle with their own formulae."

Any band arriving at their 15th studio album could be forgiven for running low on ideas, but if A View From The Top Of The World’s first three tracks are merely good rather than great, the remainder of these new songs offer exactly the kind of haughty display of prowess that fans will be hoping for. A stately but schizophrenic sprawl, Sleeping Giant makes sublime use of every one of its 10 minutes, with countless great riffs, seamless mood shifts and a near-chewable sense of gothic melodrama. It also boasts one of those wild and mischievous instrumental sections when Petrucci and Rudess appear to be goading each other to ever more preposterous acts of virtuosity, before gently shape-shifting towards an elegantly and deeply satisfying melodic crescendo.

In comparison, Transcending Time is a comparatively straightforward DT banger, but it’s an exceptional one with a lethally memorable refrain, and one of LaBrie’s finest vocal performances. For those demanding a reason to bang their heads, Awaken The Master fits the furious bill. This album’s heaviest moment, it’s a joyous ensemble piece and a guaranteed crowd-pleaser at future shows, but with numerous moments of fresh ingenuity and drummer Mike Mangini in powerhouse metal drummer mode.

Of course, every Dream Theater record is scrutinised most keenly in terms of the scope of its biggest epics. A sumptuous, 20-minute tour-de-force, the title track brims with brilliant ideas and none-more-prog conceits. It begins with militaristic syncopation, building and mutating toward LaBrie’s dramatic entrance, before scorching off on one of this band’s most fearless musical journeys yet. Much like the scintillating Illumination Theory (from 2013’s Dream Theater), A View… is partly an exercise in giving the people what they want, and partly a reminder that these musicians remain capable of just about anything. Blessed with a grade-A chorus and rich atmospherics, it hammers home the selfevident truth that Dream Theater are in an extremely harmonious and creatively vital place right now. They have also never sounded better – kudos to producer Andy Sneap for a speaker-levelling mix – nor more delighted by each other’s absurd levels of talent. Not just proper Dream Theater, then, but something ever-so-slightly bigger and better.

AVAWAVES

Chrysalis ONE LITTLE INDEPENDENT

Classically trained pair’s second album of mesmerising soundscapes.

Who says concept albums need lyrics? Not Anna Phoebe and Aisling Brouwer; the instrumental duo probably wouldn’t consider themselves prog or purveyors of anything so rigidly defined as a ‘concept’, but the sumptuous soundscapes of their second album as AVAWAVES certainly touch on both categories.

"A captivating set made for a world emerging from enforced hiding."

Sometime Roxy Music and Jethro Tull collaborator Anna Phoebe and Berlin-based documentary soundtrack composer Brouwer have wasted no time following up 2019’s debut Waves with a captivating set that’s custom-made for a world emerging from enforced hiding. These 10 pieces seem to take the nature-inspired theme of the opening title track and explore adjacent ideas further: the pair have admitted it was inspired by the transformative birth cycle of the cicada, a metaphor for emerging from a period of darkness into a new phase of life.

The impatient time signature and urgent piano figures that drive that track are offset by Anna Phoebe’s wistful violin strokes, and then Seahorse evokes a similar breathless sense of wonder as the tumbling keys and fluttering strings grow in spirit. Elsewhere, the nervous but beautiful piano motif of Emerging Flight forms a potent platform for Phoebe to weave elegantly yearning neo-classical patterns across the sky.

They’ve already painted colourful, soundtrack worthy pictures before the dark throb of electronica that introduces Midnight Bird is joined by the unlikely tones of a human voice, as guest singer YVA adds a hypnotically ethereal vocal decoration mourning ‘falling back to the world’.

If AVAWAVES were looking to draw a wider audience, this could well be the way to help them spread their wings from the world of contemporary classical and soundtrack work into the vocal-led music mainstream, but maybe that realm, full of remixers ready to ruin your artistic vision and chart-hungry collaborators more interested in showcasing themselves, is somewhere they only want to hesitantly tread at present. So listeners might be left pondering how powerful top-line melodies such as Emerging Flight or Danu could sound if transposed into lyrical form or vocal incarnations, or how Before We Wake shares similar stirring chords to the opening passages of Patti Smith’s Because The Night. But that would be to force AVAWAVES’ impressionistic sonic vistas into a traditional rock framework. Doing so would surely lose some of the endless licence their music offers to launch the listener off on their own flights of fancy, creating images – okay, concepts, even – around some of the year’s most breathtakingly evocative sounds.

JOHNNY SHARP

ANYONE

In Humanity TOGETHERMENT

Sprawling comeback album from style-hopping west coast multi-instrumentalist.

Since reactivating Anyone in 2016 after a decade pursuing film-making, frontman and ‘creative’ Riz Story has pushed the boundaries of his selfdescribed “maximum acid” sound. A one-man production, In Humanity offers up a concept set in the future, where Earth has become uninhabitable. He says it’s been nearly 10 years in the making, so when he sings, ‘If the virus was blind it would sniff you out of its mind,’ he might not be talking about recent events.

Story’s improvisational approach to songwriting can make for some freewheeling jazz-rock passages, punctuated by speedshredding guitar and knotty polyrhythms on tracks like Misanthropist (on which his onetime bandmate and current Yes singer Jon Davison guests on staccato slap-bass duties), But he also has a striking talent for simple melodies when the mood takes him: the forlorn acoustic longing of Apocalypse is irresistibly Floydian, while On The Ending Earth… is elegiac and swoonsome.

Over 101 minutes’ duration, the contrasts and stylistic jackknife turns keep coming, but while Story might bamboozle as often as he bewitches, he’s certainly never boring.

JS

AQUASERGE

The Possibility Of A New Work For Aquaserge CRAMMED DISCS/MADE TO MEASURE

French avant-gardists turn their attention to the classical world.

Since forming in 2005, Aquaserge have immersed themselves in the waters of krautrock, chanson and Canterbury to uncategorisable effect.

Recent albums Laisse Ça Être and Dejà Vous were experimental but listenable, yet they seem almost mainstream compared to their latest. Here, they interpret and take inspiration from iconoclastic 20th century composers including Zappa favourite, Edgar Varèse. His oldest known piece, Un Grand Sommeil Noir, is an atypically melodic, post-romantic setting of a Verlaine poem; here Aquaserge make it proggy and haunting through undulating woodwinds, deep percussion and the twin vocals of Audrey Ginestet and Julien Gasc. Dedicated to Varèse, 1768°C is a complex, wind-heavy piece that’s a tough listen, as is Hommage A Giacinto Scelsi, their clever if grating tribute to that Italian composer, a keen proponent of the ‘graphic score’ over standard music notation. They make two passes at Only, a brief, beautiful tune by US pioneer Morton Feldman, and the two pieces inspired by György Ligeti are exquisitely dissonant. The overall result is an exercise in left-field, right-brain music.

GRM

JOHN CARPENTER, CODY CARPENTER AND DANIEL DAVIES

Halloween Kills OST SACRED BONES

Horror maestro soundtracks the latest instalment in his famed slasher franchise.

John Carpenter’s scores have always been an important part of his Halloween series, and there will be many fans of the franchise who are looking forward to this soundtrack almost as much as seeing Halloween Kills itself. And Carpenter plus his two longtime collaborators don’t disappoint.

Carpenter’s style in 2021 bridges dark modern synthwave and the classically evocative approach of legendary Hitchcock composer Bernard Hermann. There are references to the iconic Halloween theme during Halloween Kills (Main Title) and He Appears, and there are plenty of other captivating moments elsewhere.

The stark piano motif of Strodes At The Hospital is unsettling, Cruel Intentions suggests menace lurking n the shadows, and Stand Off has the stench of uncontrollable nastiness.

This album was recorded simultaneously with this year’s Lost Themes III: Alive After Death. There are similarities, but Halloween Kills stands as a splendid work in its own right, with the fittingly titled Unkillable eerily suggesting there’s more to come.

MD

CLOSET DISCO QUEEN & THE FLYING RACLETTES

Omelette Du Fromage HUMMUS RECORDS

Hard, tasty, moreish – and not very cheesy at all.

Dismissing Closet Disco Queen & The Flying Raclettes on the basis of their name and album title, which makes them sound like an OTT joke band, would be a mistake. They do have their lighthearted moments, but this is an otherwise substantial musical statement from the Switzerland-based instrumental outfit. It’s well-constructed fare that has much in common with both American jam bands and 70s blues and funk-tinged British heavy rock while drawing experimental and art rock influences from the likes of The Mars Volta and Goat. There’s some serious attitude and swagger in the main guitar riff to opener Melolo-Aromatomat, with bass and drums kicking it further into heads-down boogie territory. Flugentaj Raketoj marries thick, dark jazz with explosions of frenetic punk, while Gigadodane is 12 minutes of musical exploration that sounds like what might have happened if Deep Purple and Hawkwind had got together for an extended jam in early 1972, with Blackmore-esque guitars. Omelette… contains generous slices of mystery and excitement for fans of forward-looking noise with a retro slant.

GMM

DIAGONAL

4 COBBLERS

Brighton-based sextet deliver Canterbury vibes via deep space.

One of the young British bands responsible for kickstarting prog again in the 00s, Diagonal went on an extended hiatus before returning two years ago with the excellent Arc, which showcased a new Canterbury scene meets post-punk sound.

4 throws further elements into the pot – space rock in particular – but feels more cohesive than its predecessor. The multipart opener Amon is the closest to a classic prog track here, some nicely ragged guitar leading into a stridently melodic verse that could be VdGG battling it out with Camel, while Alex Crispin’s and Nicholas Whittaker’s choral vocals combine like a modern day Gilmour/Wright. The minor key chime and beefy sax of Chroma is similarly full in sound, but also nails the dream-like otherness of Diagonal’s material, as though it might suddenly transubstantiate without warning, while the spare drum groove and spiky riffing of Stellate enters some particularly intriguing territory, David Wileman’s guitar rampaging over the flanged bass. Finally, Totem goes full-on cosmic, its hypnotic build leading into a minimal/maximal space ballad that strongly recalls mid-70s Hawkwind.