THE FIRE IN OUR THROATS WILL BECKON THE THAW

Pelican gives us gloomy, slightly depressing, ponderous and heavy music in this album. This time much more inclined towards the post-rock camp, the guitars are overall less heavy than in previous Australasia and resemble a bit the sound of guitars of Explosions In The Sky. As a result of this new lighter sound, the music seems more open, a bit more relaxed and sadder then past efforts. Mind you, the heavy guitars still maintain their presence although in a more refined way, allowing more space for the newer and other sounds to be expressed. Here you also have a much more dominant lead guitar, as a result of the change. It either leads or accompanies the music, making it a bit more interesting than simple soundtrack riffs being played. It begins with a fade in that finally explodes in and reintroduces us to the current sound, giving us the crunchy rhythm guitar, the lead soaring guitar and the typical post rock drum work, beating in all directions making some spectacular rhythms. It goes on to create a somewhat Explosion's like sounding track, but make no mistake; it is Pelican all the way. The overall atmosphere is quite sad, as if they depict the world rotting away into oblivion. To me their music on this album is not optimistic in nature, but rather a music that tells the tale of lost hopes and extinguished sparkles of faith. I can relate to that, since gloomy music, is my favourite type. The second track begins softly, acoustically (a feature that appears several times in this album), and slowly and only after a few minutes does the bass intervene and persuades the rest of the instruments to speed things up a bit. It even gets a bit more optimistic sounding there for some time. Then we get the crunchy guitar with somewhat dissonant riffs (which I love) and an excellent Pelican style riffing passage that delivers us the guitars playing between themselves for a bit. This all part is one spot of light in an otherwise obscure album. No point in telling you the rest. Only that the rest of this album is, as their previous one, original, unique sounding, and with every song aspire to discover new musical routes to express their feelings. The songs are always dynamic and develop the musical ideas as the song goes on. This is truly progressive music in that aspect.

They succeed again with this album to create their unique sound and a fitting soundtrack for our life. Beautiful music filled with emotions. To me this album shows a progression from their previous one, Australasia. This again shows this band's ability to renovate, reinvent and progress. 4 stars, meaning an excellent addition to a prog collection.