Epic concept debut from new Reading metallers
Despite the rumours circulating since 1977, prog isn’t dead. It changed its name to metal and continued to release excessively long EPs. Reading’s No Made Sense are just such a group, rejoicing in allowing themselves five minutes of completely random spacey washes of sound and vocals that sound like Stephen Wilson leading a Gregorian chant. All topped off with a heavy dose of pure metal scream and heavy guitars.
There’s no way of getting around it; ‘The Epillanic Choragi’ is a concept album. But if you didn’t know, you probably wouldn’t guess. Based around the story of Syr Azure and his battle to save his home planet, the idea is as epic as anything dreamt up from past masters from Tool to Opeth to Jon Anderson. Opener ‘Wake of Syr’ is the aforementioned atmospheric wash of sound, creating an expectant air and leaving the listener uncertain of which direction it’s going to go in. The immense crash of ‘The Epillanic Choragi’ (no, I have no idea what it means either) brings in the hard metal element, flowing between low-key half-whispered vocals and all-out headbanging dirty metal riffage. By now, we’re looking at each song clocking in at an average of 10 minutes, so get yourself comfortable. ‘Entases of Azure’ continues the noise, but is far more vocal-oriented than anything before, and has some amazing guitar work about 8 minutes in. Later tracks ‘Porphyrachis’ and ‘Epinolitholatyr’, as well as being unpronounceable, are excessive meandering combining both instrumental and more conventional song elements.
You can take or leave the vocals, they’re not bad but they’re nothing exceptional, and they certainly don’t explain the plot. It’s the instrumentals that really stand out, weaving echo with crunch; solid bass underlying quiet to crashing drums and heavy chords to delicate arpeggios. It gives a great sense of the shifts in mood and atmosphere even in the middle of songs. It’s not really an album for picking single songs from, but for taking as a single entity.
The ‘key’ songs are split up with shorter instrumental tracks. Usually this would be ‘filler’, but here it’s a great contrast to the heavier songs and a chance to just make weird experimental buzzing sounds, such as for ‘Seeking Beyond’, which leads into the fascinatingly intricate ‘Milachis Depths’.
If it’s difficult to follow and slightly pretentious, then that’s no worse criticism than every experimental band faces. ‘The Epillanic Choragi’ is an epic, no-holds-barred record, and a fantastically ambitious debut.