SUBSURFACE

Cast your mind back to 2004: the dreadful folly of the Iraq War was in full swing and increasingly it was becoming obvious that the case for the invasion had been built on a manifestly false premise. The broader War On Terror gave the sense of becoming a forever war which could never achieve its purported ends, and may have never really been about accomplishing them in the first place. Politically interested forces were trying to play down or outright deny the impact of pollution on the environment, and the far right was on the march in Europe and North America. The more things change, right?

Threshold's Subsurface begins with Mission Profile - a full throated critique of the absolutist rhetoric around the War On Terror lyrically, bound to an engaging melodic prog metal musical backing instrumentally speaking. Steve Anderson has replaced Jon Jeary on bass, but otherwise the lineup is much as it's been since Hypothetical; what's shifted is an extra dose of political anger in the lyrical themes of the album, and if that puts your back up because it comes from a side of the aisle you passionately disagree with, fair enough, but for my money not only are the band saying a lot of what I was thinking in 2004, they're also saying a lot of what I'm thinking now.

Given how often political subject matter in art can become dated, that's partially an indictment of the state of the world, partially a credit to Threshold's ability to create material inspired by a particular moment in time but not so bound to it as to lose relevance with the passage of years.