Progarchives, the progressive rock ultimate discography
Echolyn - As the World CD (album) cover

AS THE WORLD

Echolyn

 

Symphonic Prog

3.96 | 339 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Wicket
Prog Reviewer
3 stars Echolyn has always been a conundrum when trying to listen and analyze their music. It's not terrible, but I've never been the biggest fan.

Perhaps I've just never given them a full in-depth listen. "Suffocating The Bloom", I never finished. It sounded like typical outdated 90's prog I just couldn't take it anymore. "As The World", however, shows their attempt to move towards a more accessible, catchier prog. Although I could never recite the lyrics to the title track, the fact that the groove is in 5/8 makes swinging along to it predictable, and slightly enjoyable, but frankly that may be an exception to the rule. "Uncle" is a lengthy 7 minute track that I can't describe, other for the fact that there was singing of notes atop notes played by guitars and synth with some drums playing in the background. It's not a static track, either, it occasionally jutters and stutter-steps across syncopated rhythms, but for the life of me, I can't remember much of it.

And frankly the album suffers from much of the same syndrome. It still feels like "90's prog", honest, good-working, well-tempered musicians trying hard to create a genre that not only sounds dated, but feels and behaves dated as well. The attempt to marry catchy songs with traditional prog is a good attempt, but the 90's just weren't the day and age to really do that. The only band to really garner respect from it (in my mind) was Spock's Beard, and even then Morse's voice sounded (and still at times) a bit flat, lacking clarity and quality, almost the achilles' heel of 90's prog.

For those who DO like 90's sounding prog, both "Suffocating The Bloom" and "as The World" are perfect, but this album at least has a good attempt in simple, distilled swings at the catchy prog bat. I haven't gotten to their newest album yet, but as of this review, I still hold "The End Is Beautiful" as their greatest achievement so far. A brilliant balance of Echolyn's styles and influences that began to really brew at the start of this album.

Wicket | 3/5 |

MEMBERS LOGIN ZONE

As a registered member (register here if not), you can post rating/reviews (& edit later), comments reviews and submit new albums.

You are not logged, please complete authentication before continuing (use forum credentials).

Forum user
Forum password

Share this ECHOLYN review

Social review comments () BETA







Review related links

Copyright Prog Archives, All rights reserved. | Legal Notice | Privacy Policy | Advertise | RSS + syndications

Other sites in the MAC network: JazzMusicArchives.com — jazz music reviews and archives | MetalMusicArchives.com — metal music reviews and archives

Donate monthly and keep PA fast-loading and ad-free forever.