Browsing Tag

Karnivool

Colors In Mind Reach Music Peaks

If you draw a Venn diagram of exploratory music, where the intersection between technical metal, progressive and post-rock occurs you won’t find a whole lot of bands, but you will find Colors in Mind. With their latest release, Yugen Peaks they build their sound on a wonderfully fluid post-rock template, one that eschews the 4/4 signature and rigid verse-chorus ethic of traditional rock and instead wanders its own musical journey, often lingering in one lush musical landscape before flitting through more minimal territory, languishing in gentle, bucolic beauty and then climbing dramatic peaks.

It isn’t hard to see this approach as a modern day progressive classical music, the instruments may have been updated from the traditional format but the symphonic nature of the music is obvious to all. And l it tells its story as much through symphonic sound as it does the lyrics, it maybe be a less obvious, less direct method, but it is no less heart tugging, emotive and effective. It is music of the heart and soul, requiring total immersion. Whilst most music contains its own user manual amongst its beats and notes, one that tells the listener exactly how to interpret the message, this is more about osmosis, a vibe to be soaked up and ingested.

Ascending Dawn Release Stadium Rock Track “Cannonball”

With bands like Ascending Dawn it is easy to see the link between metal and classical music. Their music captures the same scope and grandeur, the same theatricality and dynamics that defined the biggest and most intricate end of symphonic composers such as Beethoven and Wagner. Sitting somewhere between progressive rock and technical metal, they paint widescreen musical pictures which wander between big rock sounds and more ambient interludes, between vibrant sonic oil paintings and more minimal water colour washes.

Metal often falls into very cliched camps, the growling, shouty bluster of the new breed and the classic and dated sound of the old-school, thankfully Ascending Dawn remind us that there is another way. It is one which matches power against deft musicality, structurally interesting meanderings with tight and exacting music skills, soaring vocals with soothing melodies. Maybe it is music born of contradictions, maybe it is just better thought out than most of its contemporaries, maybe they are just really good at their job. It doesn’t really matter which is true (I suspect all are true) as long as they keep doing it.