RISE RADIANT

Caligula's Horse' Rise Radiant is The progressive metal album. The elements of djent, heavy and odd chord structures, and vocals of high quality. The album art is absolutely stunning, the oil texture of the painting with a dear in the middle. The dear looking into a mountain landscape, soft streams, and a warm colour scheme.

The Tempest is a bit of a djent driven piece, the lyrics are well written. "There's No Saints, Only the thunder in skin, the frailty", the poetic content of these lyrics is amazing. The songwriting of this song is unbelievable, the instrumentation is great and the odd patterns make the song sound polyrhythmic. Harmonies, odd times, and there are some polyrhythms between the drums and guitars.

Slow Violence is the single that was released about a month ago. The guitar intro is a bit like modern hard rock, the chorus is a bit heavy and then it goes to a bit of a djent rock approach. I do like the lyrics here but they aren't as poetic and meaningful.

What is with the polyrhythmic sound? This is absolutely incredible, the vocals, guitars, keyboards, and drums are all in some very interesting sounding patterns. Salt has some interesting patterns, great lyrical themes, intense keys and some of the best vocals I've heard.

Resonate actually has some John Mitchell era It Bites in it. It's a short interlude with amazing vocals as well, Jim Grey has a bit more rasp in his voice here. I really do enjoy this interlude, its keyboard heavy, and the electric drum track is very fitting to this soft interlude.

Oceanrise is another song with interesting patterns, harmonies, heavy bass, and yet again ... strong lyrics. It seems like a typical song but in all honesty, this song just fits very well on this amazing album.

Valkyrie is a bit of a heavier tune, the djent is tuned up a bit more on this track. The vocals are a bit harsher, a bunch of great harmonies, the guitars are a bit louder, and the lyrics fit the song. This was another single released before the album, and well... this is great so enough said.

Autumn opens with a soft acoustic guitar, very It Bites at the beginning, sounds like something off Map Of The Past. This song ends up being the softest full piece on the album, it's got delicate lyrics and beautiful vocal melodies. This could be the best song on the entire album.

Intense drum fill, heavy bass and electric guitars right off the bat with the final song on this album, titled 'The Ascent'. Its a hard hitter right from the get go, and it continues with this heavy path until about the minute and a half mark. The song slows and the vocals are soft and melodic, it's got a nice jazz feel. The guitars kick into gear and we have the heavy content we all love from this band. The amount of chord changes in this song is enough to keep some jazz guitarists busy. The rest of the song has djent, large and broad harmonies, and just Caligula's Horse goodness. This song ended up being the perfect way to end this album, it had all the right elements to be a heavy end, just like The Tempest was just great enough to be the opener.

Conclusion: Give this album a shot, it has a bunch to offer and frankly this is what modern prog sounds like. Haken and Caligula's Horse are the bands to beat when it comes to the modern prog sound.

So... was Rise Radiant the album I expected? No, it was more, it has complex playing, complex patterns and song structures, along with diverse and intricate chord progressions. Is this what I was expecting from the new prog band to beat? Not at all, but am I happy I listened to this album? Absolutely.

This album really is deserving of 5 stars, it has all the right elements to be a fantastic album. I actually believe that this album could find a place in the top 100 somehow. Bottom line is, this album blew me away and I hope future listeners will find this album just as amazing as I do.

I had a lot of anticipation and very high expectations coming in to Caligula's Horse's latest album, RISE RADIANT. Over four albums - and particularly the previous three - the band had established themselves as arguably Australia's leading voice in progressive rock/metal.

Understandably, coming up against such high expectations is no easy feat for any album, and while my first few listened through RISE RADIANT were very positive, I did have a small sense that it was a little below the quality of the three albums that preceded it. I have since come to realise how wrong I was.

RISE RADIANT is Caligula's Horse's most musically dense, most creatively diverse and most well-produced album, and as a result it probably takes a few more listens to fully appreciate than an album such as Bloom.

The album opens with the symphonic and powerful "The Tempest". Released as the first single, my original impressions of this track were that it was solid but nothing overtly special. However, hearing this now in the context of an album-opener, I honestly believe this is the perfect statement to open up this excellent album. The riffs are excellent, the song is more layered and dense than most of their material up to this point, and the track does everything it needs to with a touch of perfection.

"Slow Violence" is a much more stripped-back track than anything else the band has done before. It's full of spares yet chunky riffs and fantastic vocal melodies, giving it a much more modern, djenty sound than some of the band's other material. I'd say this is one of the less impressive tracks on the record, but it fills its role quite nicely.

"Salt" is a thoroughly unique track in the band's discography and manages to really display their technical chops while still being one of their more emotionally impactful tracks. You can hear the band really taking on influences from their peers here, with some Leprous vibes at points alongside a Haken-esque midsection, but the end result definitely feels original. This is one of the most impressive tracks on the album, and has already proven to be a fan favourite.

"Resonate" is a nice, atmospheric interlude track, similar to "Love Conquers All" or "Capulet" off In Contact. However, whether it be due to the quality of the track itself or its placement within the album, I feel this track works for me a lot better than either of them did. It provides a nice segue into the more bombastic tracks to follow ...

"Oceanrise" was a bit of a grower for me. It felt like one of the weaker tracks on the album at first, but now I can see it's value as a track that it is both heavy and very catchy. The rolling rhythm guitars interspersed by high-gain guitar 'stabs' reminds me of some moments from The Tide, The Thief & River's End. My only standing critique of the album is that the final riff ends abruptly, when it could have held us for a little longer like the outro to The Tempest does.

"Valkyrie" kicks in straight away and is probably one of the heaviest and most technical tracks the band has ever done. This feels like an all-out assault and yet still reminds melodic the whole time. The chorus sounds massive, and this will 100% be a live favourite once tours start back up again.

"Autumn" is a power ballad that really places Jim Grey's serene vocals front and centre. The entire track is a masterclass in tension - building up energy slowly and teasing an explosion of power (something similar to what a track such as "Water's Edge" does), however this explosion doesn't come. Instead, what we get is a controlled release as the final chorus soars into the ending. This is a truly beautiful work. Also: shout out the Dale Prinsse's excellent base solo preceding what is one of Sam Vallen's best solos on the album.

The previous track transitions directly into "The Ascent" to create the effect of an 18 min suite closing out the album. The opening onslaught features some of the chunkiest riff-writing the band have ever done, building up into all the symphonic energy of a classic Dream Theater epic. What follows is a back-and-forth between beautifully intimate passages and some of the most epic-sounding music the band has ever written, culminating in a chugging riff beneath a layered chorus of vocals. This final section is truly special, managing to deliver uplifting lyrics in a haunting style that somehow only adds to their power. There will be a temptation to compare this track to "Graves" (the 15 min epic from the band's previous album), as being the only two 10+ min tracks the band has done since their debut. And in doing this, some may feel as though "The Ascent" disappoints by comparison. I believe the comparison isn't accurate or fair, however. At under 11 minutes, "The Ascent" is actually much closer in length and structure to something like "All Is Quiet By The Wall" (the 8 min closing epic from the band's second album). Seen through this lens, the true power of "The Ascent" shines through. This is a track that manages to take the listener on an epic and powerful journey while feeling tight and precise the entire time. I believe that once the comparisons to "Graves" have worn off, fans will begin to see this as a top 5 all-time Caligula's Horse track.

Rise Radiant is a phenomenal album that sees Australia's leading voice in prog push themselves to new creative heights. I don't believe that its flow or pacing is quite as flawless as that of Bloom - which I'm still holding as the band's crowning achievement thus far - but this album pushes boundaries and can comfortably be considered among their best works.

I'd also like to point out the production, which juggles the many layers present throughout the album with a level of mastery not seen often enough in the genre. The album sounds dense but not congested, massive but not noisy. It really is a fantastically produced work, and gets a full 5 stars from me.

The Australian metal boom of the past decade or so has produced some absurdly talented bands and some truly classic albums. Caligula's Horse is definitely counted amongst one of those absurdly talented bands and has a few of those classic albums under their belt. Their latest record, however, is definitely not of them; unless, of course, you're perfectly ok with the bands you love regurgitating everything they've already done.

As far as albums with ambient djent and pop sensibility are concerned, I guess Rise Radiant is not necessarily a bad record. But listening to it only serves to remind me how much I'd rather be listening to their previous records, or Sky Harbor, or any of the other great Aussie metal acts making noise these days.

With their fifth album, Rise Radiant, Caligula's Horse follow the recent trend of a few other prog metal bands of mixing their trademark heavy sound (in this case, a djenty form of prog metal) with more mainstream pop/rock sensibilities. Leprous, with their 2019 album Pitfalls, is an obvious example, but also Haken with 2020's Virus tread a similar path. Needless to say, this development did not sit well with some of the fans of these bands. But I am not one of those: I did love both albums (Pitfalls being my Album of the Year for 2019), so in principle Rise Radiant fell on very welcoming ears. Unfortunately, however, this album did not fully 'click' with me, as I felt that it is a bit of a hit and miss, with only a few songs reaching the spectacular levels of the band's previous output.

Let's start with the good news. Caligula's Horse have always delivered their healthy dose of prog workouts on their albums, and Rise Radiant is no exception. 'Salt' and the two interconnected closing tracks, 'Autumn' and 'The Ascent' (the best song of the album), offer musical tour-de-forces that will please long-time fans of the band. All sonic trademarks of the band are on display here. While not reaching the complexity of songs from the band's previous album In Contact, the structure of these three songs is sufficiently intricate to keep things unpredictable and interesting. There is a strong emphasis on dynamics (here as on the rest of the album), with a continuous alternation between stripped-down, quiet parts and djenty, rhythmically complex sections. But even at their heaviest, Caligula's Horse never lose sight of melody as Jim Grey's melancholic but strangely uplifting vocal melodies, often sung in falsetto to increase the emotional punch, take centre stage in the mix. These songs are not too different from what the band has offered on previous albums, except for a general toning-down of aggression in the music and a heightened attention to keeping the melodies simple and catchy.

Elsewhere on the album, Caligula's Horse take more decisive steps towards their new sonic identity. The song structure is vastly simplified on tracks like 'The Tempest', 'Slow Violence', 'Oceanrise' and 'Valkyrie', which largely stick to the verse/chorus/middle-eight/chorus sequence of mainstream pop/rock. The arrangements are also kept quite simple and linear, with variations mostly consisting of a thickening of the sound in the repetitions of the verse. The verses are usually soft and dark, with Grey's relying heavily on his lower-register and the instruments quieting down to the point that often only acoustic guitars or the bass are left to provide an harmonic counterpart to Grey's croons. This creates a stark contrast with the choruses, which are instead fuller, heavier and uplifting. It's all very well-done and perfectly geared up to create maximum cathartic effect, which makes these songs very easy to like on first listen.

And this is where the bad news start. While songs like 'Slow Violence', 'Oceanrise' or 'Valkyrie' make an immediate impression, it unfortunately does not last, as the simplified structure makes the songs quite predictable and, in the long-run, uninteresting. What's more, the fact that these songs are all cut from the same cloth in terms of structure and dynamics leaves me with the feeling that the album lacks variation and is too monotonous. In addition, although the melodies are catchy and hummable, they are often not terribly interesting and tend to slip out of my mind not long after I have heard them. More generally, I feel that the album lacks moments that make my ears properly perk up. I can probably count these moments on the palm of one hand: 'The Tempest' (the best of the bunch of simpler songs) features a killer opening/closing riff, an interesting vocal phrasing on the verse and a gorgeous chorus; 'Salt' contains some beautiful vocal harmonies; and there is some exciting guitar and vocal work on 'The Ascent', particularly on the verse and the closing choral section. Not much else really stands out for me. This is a big difference compared to an album like In Contact, which was literally bursting with memorable, head-turning moments that made you want to put the record on again as soon as it finished.

And this is probably the biggest limit of Rise Radiant: while pleasant and well-produced, it is not a record that I can see myself turning to again and again, because I simply do not feel that it has the same long-lasting listening value of albums like In Contact or Bloom. I cannot help but draw a comparison between Caligula's Horse's new musical direction and the evolution of Leprous, the band that I find sonically closer to Caligula's Horse. While the Norwegians have managed to take the best qualities of pop music (accessible, memorable melodies; subtle and sophisticated arrangements) and merge them with the unpredictability and forward-looking attitude of prog, Caligula's Horse seem to have also borrowed from pop its less appealing qualities: predictability and lack of musical depth. I don't want this criticism to sound too negative, though, because Rise Radiant remains a very listenable album - just not as exciting or enthralling as I would have hoped the new Caligula's Horse album would be, especially after a heavy-weight like In Contact.