Interference

Man, I honestly feel bad for Anubis Gate at this point. At one point, one of the beacons of the power/prog scene with the legendary duo of albums, Andromeda Unchained and The Detached - and I thought the self-titled album was pretty damn good, too! Then 2014 rolled around and… Horizons happened. A veritable pastiche of their prior three albums, played at half-mast. Suffice it to say, they weren’t on very many peoples’ minds after that – likely not helped by how dominant Haken had become by point and ever since. Well, here we have Interference, which had the potential to surprise us and interfere with any massive bout of passive popularity for Haken’s Fauna. You know, reestablish themselves as kings of power/prog and everything.

So where does this land? Honestly, it comes down to how you look at music as a whole. If all you are looking for is an impeccably played set of songs, Anubis Gate have you covered. Kim Olesen can always be relied on to bring out some stellar guitar-work and the odd bit of cool keyboard ambience, Michael Bodin – who had replaced Jesper Jenson about ten years ago – is certainly no slouch on the axe either, as he can throw down with the best of them. In terms of the music, it sure is modern prog alright. “Yer sirs, I’d like some chugs, some monolithic grooves, those really cool textured riffs, and that one bout of rapid-fire strumming”. To be fair, Anubis Gate were the guys that really kicked things up a notch with the fantastic Andromeda Unchained, so it makes sense from a business perspective that they’d maintain at least that basic sound.

But yet it’s just… boring. Even going past it being yet another album that’s just Andromeda Unchained at only half its power level, it’s one of those albums that doubles down on technical skill and precise rhythms at the expense of things like hooks and atmosphere. About the best you’ll get of the latter are those moments where Henrik’s vocals are particularly warm, as well as some of the aforementioned textured riffs you’ll find throughout. Beyond that, it’s difficult to really separate this from the various other power/prog albums from about the past 10-15 years. You’ve heard these riffs, you’ve heard these core progressions, and you’ve heard them done better! It’s just one of those things where you can acknowledge that it’s well-done and everything, but there isn’t anything here that’s particularly grabbing or interesting, or anything to really write home about. It’s like one song attempts a monolithic structure to welcome us to the show, one song focuses more on overall ambience with the trade-off between keyboards, textured riffs and vocals, one song tries to riff hard (by the standards of the genre), and one song attempts to be epic with big riffs and a big ol’ showcase…

...and I did expect that repeated listens will have this shit grow on me and Interference would actually emerge as a real highlight of 2023. However, it never did, because nothing really stuck aside from the impeccable technical musicianship – which I can get from Andromeda Unchained, except that album is also chock full of hooks and memorable passages. I got the chorus for “Point of No Concern” ringing through my head all fucking day today. Nothing here is even coming close to that and it’s really sad because fuck me, these guys used to be really good, man!

If this was just an isolated incident and Anubis Gate were otherwise killing it, I’d settle on Interference being a right step down. The problem is that this has been the case for nearly a decade now, and it’s getting a tad annoying anticipating a new Anubis Gate release, only to wind up with power/prog that’s only vaguely and generally fine.