ECHOLYN

Ooh, I don't know guys. For some reason echolyn's new album leaves me rather cold. For starters, the division of the physical product into two CDs when the running time could easily fit onto one seems an odd decision to me. Cynics might accuse the band of wanting to sell the album for the price of a 2CD set but only providing 1CD of music, but given that you can listen to the whole thing on Bandcamp for free if you're frugally minded I think that they deserve the benefit of the doubt on that front. I suspect it's more that they want the CD experience to be, on a tactile level, comparable to the LP experience, and to create a definite break midway through the album.

I do have to wonder about that. It seems to me like the action of a band who aren't wholly convince their new opus can hold the listener's attention for a full 71 minutes... in which case why not edit it down? The fact is, there's a few too many diversions into flabby, cheesy, Spock's Beardy filler for my tastes here. It's genuinely surprising for an echolyn album to make so little impression on me, musically speaking; as it is, the album comes across as a competent going through the retro-prog motions without really doing anything especially eye-opening. In fact, the eccentric choice regarding splitting the album to two CDs is more or less the only thing here which I could describe as out of the ordinary.

In the end, it's nice to have them back but I think Anglagard have the better comeback album of 2012. (Apparently echolyn hadn't gone on hiatus at all since their last studio album, though I think if over half a decade passes since your band's most recent release I think people can be forgiven for thinking otherwise.)