BEACONS

I normally despise djent. I love MESHUGGAH and mathy textures and angular rhythms, of course, being that I'm on a prog website. But the subsubsubsub-genre takes way too much from a single band's sound to really do anything for me. And the only doses of other sounds typically come from metalcore, a genre I just cannot deal with at all.

So along comes CLOUDKICKER. His first album, THE DISCOVERY, was passed along to me by some friends who know that I like the heavier end of music, and I applauded them for their efforts, but it didn't quite hit the mark. The sounds felt a bit too derivative for me, sticking much closer to "traditional djent" boundaries. I've since changed my opinion of the album, but at the time, it didn't register very high.

Jump forward a couple years later. A different friend sends me a link to listen to Cloudkicker's newest, BEACONS, for free. I figured I deserved to give him another shot; not because I liked The Discovery, which I didn't, but because my friend gave a glowing review of the album. I was hesitant, but I decided to go for.

What I found was unlike what I was expecting: There are angular textures, sure, but this focuses much more on post-metal atmospherics and textural guitar playing. Gone are the out-of-place metalcorish clean tones, replaced with a satisfying distortion. It causes all of the guitar lines to bleed together, but not in the sense of diluting them. Instead, it's more like... say, cutting an oak down and looking at the rings. They are clearly separate, but also part of one thing. These lines feel like they would be weak alone, but together make a surprisingly minimalistic sound. There are lots of bits, but none of them sound terribly complex, working more as complementary simple components. The shorter tracks tend to be these thick guitar textures acting as more melodic pieces, offering him room for simple but very emotive clean guitar work. The longer tracks tend to be more atmospheric and groove-oriented, offering something akin to MOGWAI at their heaviest (see: MY FATHER, MY KING) or ISIS, possibly even ROSETTA STONE.

All in all, this is a fantastic piece of music, and considering that you can get it for free, there is no reason for someone not to have this. I paid for a CD because it was 10 dollars and the music is wonderful, but that's because I love album artwork and things. Chuck the guy a couple bucks. He deserves it for this wonderful album.