NUCLEUS

What an absolutely stunning album this is! After Vemod, an incredible debut by anyone's standards, Nucleus released in 1995 is even better. Taking their King Crimson inspired template, this time honed to perfection, the music is even more dynamic than Vemod, it's tighter and heavier too.

Title track Nucleus is a thrilling statement of intent as the listener is pummelled by the brutal rhythm section of Peter Nordins on drums and Jan Erik Liljeström's bass, one of the heaviest bass sounds ever. Nicklas Berg's discordant, angular riffing (in the best possible sense) and Anna Sofi Dahlberg's eerie, haunting mellotron providing the icing on the cake. Things quieten down for the vocals on the verse adding light and shade, another lesson Anekdoten have learned from King Crimson that to make your heavier bits sound even heavier you stick them next to something more mellow.

The hushed and calm tones of Book Of Hours demonstrate another Anekdoten strength where they lock into a repetitive and hypnotic groove, subtle changes and inflections for added interest as it slowly builds into another musical maelstrom. The track like much of the bands material is full of dynamics over its 10 minute length and one of the highpoints on an album brimming with them. The restrained beauty of Here is perfectly placed between the brutality of instrumental Rubankh and the opening of This Far From The Sky until as is often the way with Anekdoten things take a lull for the melancholic vocals.

The King Crimson comparisons are no doubt inevitable and can't be denied but Anekdoten take it further than Crimson could due to their untimely split at the peak of their game and also stamp their own identity on it, incidentally something they would do more and more on each subsequent release making the comparisons less obvious. But I digress as Nucleus is a very modern sounding album despite the obvious paradox of the heavy use of a vintage mellotron. 14 years after its release Nucleus still remains one of the most essential albums of the progressive genre, not just of recent times but of any decade since King Crimson opened the floodgates in 1969.