A first class debut album, showcasing not so much promise as confirmation of the talents of all concerned, which really do seem to be a natural fit for each other.
Sometimes it’s tricky staying on top of the excellent material being released in the world of prog rock at this moment, with such a lot of quality that sometimes things can be unfairly dismissed, or overlooked. That’s a nice problem to have of course, and speaks volumes for the healthy state of the music in 2024, at least from a creative point of view (it is now 48 years on from when progressive rock was supposed to have been ‘killed off’ if you remember, so with the 50th anniversary of that obituary looming, it is safe to say that the corpse is looking extremely animated!) This album, released a couple of months ago, was one of those which quietly slipped through the cracks in my floorboards as one might say, and that was a mistake. I had heard about the band with some interest, but after listening to a couple of the singles released ahead of the album and not being entirely hooked, I put it into my ‘provisional inbox’, where it languished until these last few days when I thought, well, it’s time to give it a bit of a check over and see. And from that exploratory listen to the first couple of tracks, it simply kept playing right through – and then started again. Because this is one case of where the first cuts were not the deepest, and there are extraordinary delights awaiting.
It isn’t surprising that this line-up should produce something good, as it is a genuine prog ‘supergroup’ of sorts – no, not the Asia or Bad Company type, involving a bunch of arena-fillers, but four talented and respected figures on the UK prog scene. Two ex-This Winter Machine men, guitarist and drummer/producer John Cook and Dom Bennison respectively) are joined by Mark Gatland from Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate on bass, and the currently hugely busy Charlie Bramald, who fronts Ghost Of The Machine when he isn’t seemingly keeping about fifty other plates spinning, on vocals. And the album they have produced is one which has its stylistic fingers in several different pies – thus leading to the fact that a couple of sample singles can’t tell anything near to the full story.
After the low-key ‘overture’ of sorts, The Uninvited (featuring guest Ruby Jones on keys), the album bursts into life with the effervescent and razor-sharp prog-metal of Break My Bones. This is progressive metal as it really should be done in some ways, throwing in an equal measure of powerful riffing and melodic trickery into a pleasingly accessible whole. There is no hint of the more rambling merchants of the genre, who work on the principle that riffing quickly and putting eight different sections together shunted into a track doth prog-metal make. (Maybe it doth, but entertaining prog-metal it doth not!) Indeed, that side of the band’s output provides several of the best moments here, with the penultimate Sneak Attack being a near-perfect crystallisation of the genre, topped off by some cracking fretwork from Cook.
Elsewhere there are different, but no less impressive, diversions however. Compromised was one of those early singles which makes much more of an impact within the context of the album that it did standing alone; a more breezy affair, evoking some hints of ’80s period Rush in places, it’s a fine, if lighter, piece which gives some nice stylistic relief, coming as it does right on the heels of Break My Bones. The Plea is a compact and bite-sized instrumental – but then again so was Sylvia by Focus, and that’s still a classic for a reason. The Plea might not be quite at that table, but it’s a beautifully strident and anthemic piece which is a standout on the album. In this case, it’s one which really does work on its own, and would have certainly hooked me as a trailer. The closing My Peace is another quite short instrumental, and a beautiful way to end the album, while elsewhere there’s the lush balladry of Oceans and the gloriously punchy prog of The Point Of No Return to get your teeth into.
It’s not a flawless album – one of those singles, the perhaps over-commercial sheen of Take Me Down (featuring Philip Stuckey of the band Stuckfish) is one of those early single releases which I still feel was an unwise choice, and the slightly more ambient experimentalism of The Left Unsaid is short but not really necessary. To my mind, cutting down from the twelve tracks to ten, and coming in at around 47 minutes, would just have sharpened the focus that little bit more to make a real five star effort.
Despite those minor quibbles however, this remains a first class debut album, showcasing not so much promise as confirmation of the talents of all concerned, which really do seem to be a natural fit for each other. Now, if they stick around to produce a second album follow-up, I can guarantee that it will hit the top of my inbox and go nowhere near the cracks in the floorboards. No distractions!
