HOMELESS

Aye, this album needs a very strong standing. I mean related to my overwhelming reaction concerning the predecessor 'The Second Hand', which they had released in 2017. 'Homeless' does not follow that narrative context, but sounds very ANUBIS like again, yeah, familiar anyway. First of all, important to know or not, the staff hasn't changed since then. Experiments, surprises wanted? You may say, they are playing it safe, okay. If awaiting something totally new, then one might be disappointed probably. I have to admit, in the first instance this had weakened my enthusiasm a bit. Solely a copy-cat, getting too sterile eventually?

Nah, after taking several re-runs during recent weeks, this impression has completely vanished for good. In common sense 'Homeless' is dealing with perceptions of the contemporary world. Enough food for thought, isn't it? The prospering opener Reflection will set a first exclamation mark. Well, starting innocent somehow, though soon evolving into a perfect synthesis of hauting melody and multi-variant execution. Moulding's singing voice appears in best shape ultimately, excellent guitar presence on top. Can We Find Our Way Back Home? Of course the album title track nails down another centerpiece, the drumming strikes, it sounds completely rounded.

Equipped with an unusual finale Sirens really takes off, immediately followed by the nice ballad In Shadows. ANUBIS are serving emotive catchy melodies and a lush instrumentation throughout, that's guaranteed. When it comes to me 'Homeless' can't start the same fire as it happened with the previous studio effort. Nevertheless the ANUBIS crew is convincing again with a charming and entertaining flow all the way through. No filler. Songs are even faded out here and there, which opens some perspective when it comes to the following live events. Definitely a recommended addition to your prog music collection, if you're underway on melodic rock paths.

Amazingly although the Sydney, Australia based ANUBIS has been around since 2004, the band has enjoyed an amazingly consistent lineup with Robert James Moulding (lead vocals, lyrics, percussion), David Eaton (keyboards, vocals), Doug Skene (guitar, vocals), Dean Bennison (guitar, lap steel, vocals) and Steven Eaton (drums, vocals) having appeared on every single album. Only bassist Anthony Stewart hasn't been around since the beginning and this constant unifying element in the band's history has meant that ANUBIS has long become a tight cohesive unit that isn't afraid to take its music into ever changing directions.

Yes, this band is still rooted in the world of neo-prog, the symphonic prog offshoot that began some forty years ago when prog was licking its wounds and slowly making a comeback but the resilient style has been amazingly adaptive in adopting new elements and while many progressive rock bands these days opt to dwell on retro this and retro that, others like ANUBIS aren't afraid to do a little exploration. Excluding 2018's "Different Stories" which was sort of a reprise of older material set to acoustic form, ANUBIS hadn't been heard of since 2017's "Second Hand" but returned in 2020 with its sixth overall studio album HOMELESS. As the title suggests and by the nature of neo-prog itself, the album is based on worldly perceptions set to emotive compositions and HOMELESS reflects the years 2020 and all the changes and challenges that occurred.

Like much of neo-prog HOMELESS offers vague concepts set to music in which the listener has a bit of wiggle room in how to interpret but paints a rather certain picture of some person's perspective in this case undergoing a traumatic worldly series of experiences. Being based in Australia, the album covers the horrible fires that have swept that nation in recent years with 2020 being one of the worst. The overall emotional delivery seems to stem from helplessness and the inability find sure footing in a world gone mad. The album perfectly crafts the perfect sonic palette to display these fist of insecurity upon and the band has never sounded better. Robert James Moulding has lost none of his perfect vocal style that suits this genre of prog so well and the drumming prowess of Steve Eaton continues to expand the percussive possibilities of punctuating the melodic emotive tugs of the synth-laden hooks laced with guitar and bass accompaniments.

ANUBIS has always offered more tones and timbres than the average neo-prog bands having incorporated everything from sitars and glockenspiels on previous works and on HOMELESS the band offers lots of slide guitars, melodica, a Spanish laud as well as a clarinet. While other prominent neo-prog bands nurtured their hard rock guitar heft incrementally through the 21st century before dropping it just as they were perched to cross the metal music threshold, ANUBIS has retained a bit of guitar and bass heft although have never been even close to the distortion-rich angst of the metal world. While the heavier rock guitar power chords are ritualized throughout this albums nine tracks, the chord progressions and use of clever syncopations, contrapuntal effects and just damn good songwriting techniques guarantees a diverse and energetic delivery system of the 41-minute running time.

Only the opening reflective which exceeds the 7-minute mark is really of any substantial length. Most of the tracks on HOMELESS are much shorter ranging from the three to five mark however none of the band's progressive qualities have been affected in the least. On the contrary i would say HOMELESS is probably a bit more proggy than previous efforts. Neo-prog has always existed on the pop side of the prog world and mostly considered proggy for teasing out pop hooks into sprawling compositions but HOMELESS takes a different approach by adding lots of proggy time signatures and jazz influences into shorter tracks. There are no thruways on this as each song shines like the shiny foil on the album cover. With the last album "Different Stories" i was beginning to worry that ANUBIS had run out of steam but it's clear with HOMELESS that the band is in no danger of exhaustive its ability to crank out a new take of its unique brand of neo-prog. Another winner in my book.