From Mars to Sirius

Morbid Angel. Wait, what ? Oh, right. This album is massively inspired by the death metal band Morbid Angel. And yet, it isn't a death metal record. Which is interesting. But seriously though, they do rip off the Floridian legends on a few occasions here. So the point is this album is a mashup of all sorts of influences (maybe not reggae - thankfully), combined into one work, albeit a work that is really long. I guess the band needed over an hour to cram all those influences together.

So what's so good about this alleged astral voyage ? Oh, easy: the production. No, not exclusively the production, there are other unique qualities at play as well, but although I don't know where Sirius is, as far as I'm concerned this album may've well been made there. They've got that Peavey 5150 type sound, but for every single guitar stroke whether continuous tremolo picking or finely articulated triplet shifts, slick octave chords (often Morbid style harmonized) or mean tritones and suspended muffled chugs, there's a perfect distribution of saturation where the guitars never sound bloated but never starved for gain either. They sound perfectly balanced the whole time, despite the versatile array of sections on display. Added to the interesting (and rare) use of reverb at the back of them that helps them breathe and exude more fullness and a realistic grit, as they're reinforced by an equally balanced and lovely tone of the bass guitar, adding its own bite and aural might to the mix. The drums are ace, and the other Duplantier (the one who plays a bit of guitar and also behind the mic) delivers with an overall excellent performance of tight, forceful shouts with enough variation throughout (including several cleans) that animate and fit this style perfectly.

The album starts with the now iconic 'Ocean Planet' and its dramatic opener, the brisk breakdown ended with a raging pinch harmonic before an ocean opens up it seems in the subsequent verse section with its awe-inspiring bliss. Later on the song, the signature pick-slide over all six strings action makes a first appearance, and although it is brilliantly used in that full context here with its harpy-like shriek, it does tend to become gimmicky past a certain point on the record. So a strong argument would be made that this track is the ambassador for the album as it demonstrates all of its most poignant strengths and originality in a five minute format - not to say the rest is filler, of course. What the rest is though is an exploration of those many moods the band were keen on showing off in songs that may not for any of them be truly great songs in their own right, and instead serve as platforms to delve into that sound and the different ways they could expand on basic premises with a production that most rock/metal musicians would envy. Going through those tracks, most main sections are actually quite basic; often flat-out simplistic melodically; and the value comes more from the effort put into making them as intense and pleasing to the ear as possible.

Think: if the song-writing on an album was a bit above average, but every second passing oozes with glorious guitar/bass tones over exquisite drums and an excellent vocal performance, ear-candy, peppered with a genuinely strong part here and there - the lure of that album would be difficult not to succumb to. Is it the most substantial album of 2005 though ? Certainly not. To put it simply we're given mostly pretty cool parts, but not great. For example the Morbid Angel riffs sound like randomly stuck together shapes, a homage of sorts to the latter - not really top drawer musical ideas, and far from Azagthoth's creative flair. This could almost be described as a really long, semi-organized jam, with certain guiding principles leading the four-piece until they get comfortable with a part and run it sixteen times or thirty two.

Parts that stand out with their heaviness or viciousness include 'Ocean Planet' breakdown riff, 'From the sky' (right in the middle), 'The heaviest matter in the universe' (that riff), and among the more emotionally climactic endings: 'Where dragons dwell' outro, 'To Sirius' outro.

One aspect, briefly touched on mentioning Morbid Angel is as much as it is positive to see bands mixing influences together, this often comes across as too comfortable with emulating those different influences where there's a feeling of outright imitation of other bands there. A quick example would be on 'World to come': the stoner rock riff with that old chromatic bass change trick and the nosy, almost sarcastic voice tone. Time and time again there's a slight feeling of déjà vu in the sections, a tad too obvious. There's also quite frankly a cheesy feel on this with the overly fantasy-driven lyrics and song titles. Dragons and flying whales, an instrumental called 'Unicorn' or even a track simply called 'Global warming' (that's basically an 8-min tapping section, or nearly that)... all this adds up to put this a bit on the pretentious/affected side, if not precious. Here's an attempt at a song title for this: "Dancing Mermaid". Or "Flight of the gryphon". Aren't you now imagining exactly what those are sounding like in your head ?