BOOK OF HORIZONS

Book of Horizons is another fantastic album by Secret Chiefs 3 that is unfortunately marred by a couple of dreadful tracks I wish could be purged from the album. While there isn't anything overly revolutionary or new compared to their previous album, it's still a thoroughly enjoyable outing that's well worth a listen, give or take a dozen or so listens.

Much like their other albums, you can expect an uncanny mixture of different genres and styles here. All of the tracks on this album are composed by different "sub-groups", which are marked by a specific style. For instance, the tracks "The 4 (The Great Ishraqi Sun)" and "The 3 (Afghan Song)" by the sub-group Ishraqiyun have a predominantly middle-eastern sound to them. My main beef with this album are the two tracks done by the Holy Vehm sub-group, which are a couple of absolutely dreadful death metal songs. Those two tracks alone are enough to throw off the balance of the whole album, and I always find myself skipping them completely. Sure, there's plenty of quirky moments throughout the album, but at least in all of the other cases the different styles actually manage to fit together; these two tracks just seem like they were accidentally put on the wrong album and for whatever reason they decided to keep them on there just to raise a few eyebrows. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with death metal, but I don't think it works on an album like this.

But hey, if you skip those two awful tracks, the rest of the album is golden! Well worth checking out. In fact, I demand you grab a copy today. Do it.