Qualeaceans - Capture Of Ziz (2014)
Qualeaceans' new album has been four
years in the making, and the end result is a thoroughly impressive,
complex, and ambitious arrangement of metal overdrive with a prog
approach to crafting the rhythms, counter-point, and hundreds of
intricate micro-shifts which make up the hour-plus single track, “In
The Cavern Of The Flightless”. Let's go ahead and acknowledge from
the start that going for a track which fills a CD to capacity is a
risky move at best; it asks some real devotion from the listener, for
one thing, and too many bad or boring passages can sink the whole
ship.
On the latter issue, at least, the band
has nothing to worry about with Capture Of Ziz.
Prog metal fans are generally pretty patient and willing to see
where a band's going with something not immediately obvious in its
intentions, and Qualeaceans return a strong pay-off on that
investment. They have an amazingly fluid quality to their music,
evident in the rippling echo of the drummer's cymbals, the sinuous
guitar-work, their ability to jump from one time signature cleanly
into another (or a few simultaneously), and the song's structure,
which moves about like a snake that can't stop shedding its skin. The bass is frequently the only 'concrete' part of the melody,
keeping a powerful riff going on the mix's low end (sometimes slowly
mutating as it goes along) as everything else around it flies into
controlled chaos.
Settling
on a vocal style to accompany this sort of wild song-writing couldn't
have been an easy task, and fittingly, the singer switches through a
number of styles to fit the music, though they're usually centered
somewhere around a traditional metal growl. They're also not a
constant feature, which seems like a smart choice to keep from
tearing his throat apart trying to match some of the more blistering
passages. Also worth noting is the strong production work, which
adjusts acoustics and polish to fit the changing flavors of the album
to good effect.
Altogether,
I have to say I'm thoroughly impressed by the band's work. The time
they put into making their epic track really comes through in the
final product, as the whole thing has a sense of immensity to
it. Trying to imagine the cavern of the title based on the music
brings to mind images of something like a termite hive the size of
the Grand Canyon, with inhabitants of a size to match. It's
dizzyingly big, almost overwhelmingly dense with activity, and just
plain powerful. The band has expressed interest in a physical
release, so kick some money their way for a digital copy to make that
happen... if you can handle it.
~
Gabriel
For
Fans Of; Abstracter,
Asilo, Gnaw Their Tongues, White Darkness, Behold... The Arctopus
~
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