THE TIDE, THE THIEF & RIVER'S END

THE TIDE, THE THIEF & RIVER'S END is a dark, melancholic, and ultimately excellent sophomore album from Australia's best prog band - Caligula's Horse. This is an album full of heavy riffs, soaring vocals and tight songwriting.

Among the band's 4 albums thus far, this one represents quite a unique stage in the band's evolution. It is undoubtedly more focused and fully-realised than their debut, but not quite as accessible as the albums that have come out since. It also predates the djent influences they began incorporating on Bloom and went on to make a sizeable part of their sound on In Contact. Thus, THE TIDE, THE THIEF & RIVER'S END deliver's a more classic brand of heavy prog metal in comparison to the modern sound of its successors.

One thing this album shares with Bloom, however, is the ability to deliver intricate and powerful musical journeys in tracks under 10 minutes long. In the modern prog climate of songs unnecessarily exceeding 10 minutes on albums over 60 minutes long, it's refreshing to experience a band who know how to pull this off in a tighter package. Don't get a wrong: I love a long epic as much as anyone, but many bands are guilty of appearing to want to outdo one another and/or themselves by throwing everything and the kitchen sink at their songs. This sometimes comes at the expense of the songwriting itself, so it's great to see a band pulling this off while also practising some healthy restraint.

This album lacks the slightly more radio-friendly tracks on Bloom, but to its credit they would have been out of place on this more melancholic album anyway. Instead, tracks such as "Gift to Afterthought" and "Atlas" juxtapose catchy vocals melodies with the darker musical passages. "Water's Edge" builds up incredibly from its mellow opening to its frantic close, and "Into the White" takes the listener on an epic soundscape of competing staccato rhythm and lead guitars. "Old Cracks in New Earth" and "Dark Hair Down" are about as aggressive as the band have ever sounded, while "Thief" is a great 'calm before the storm' type of track before the album is closed by the proggy "All is Quiet by the Wall".

This is the most uncompromising the band have ever sounded, and for a voice as serenely pure as Jim Grey's, he does an excellent job of adding a layer of grit to his delivery on this album. The only thing I could possibly think to mark down on this album would be the production, which isn't bad per se, but merely sounds slightly 'thin' compared to the fuller and more dynamic production on Bloom. This, however, is entirely forgivable considering the album was produced independently by an (at the time) up-and-coming Australian prog band. This may be their second album, but it was the beginning of their accession to prog greatness, and gets a very deserving 5 stars from me.