Abstract Deviation — Terpsihora [Progressive Metal, Review]
We live in a time when people read headlines but don’t read the texts underneath; when listeners turn off a song after five seconds, if it hasn’t hooked them with anything; when the script of the film is tried to chew the viewer as much as possible, so that people do not have to think again. In the modern world, the TERPSIHORA album will be a very uncomfortable one. Because this album is one of those releases that will be really revealed only after 5–10 plays. An album which you need to dig, read social media posts and parse texts. An album, which in order to understand you need to have some kind of musical and not only erudition. Abstract Deviation knew what they were doing — a separate respect for their courage.
Pros:
- Features. Thousands of them. In might be called “overproduced”, but I never perceived this term in a negative way. It feels like they worked on the material even more than it was necessary.
- Sound. It’s awesome. As a sound designer, I really enjoyed it. People screaming about “bad mixing” let me only to smile.
-Russian language. These days when it seems that religion does not allow musicians in the CIS-countries to perform in Russian, it was very pleasant to hear it in half of the tracks.
- Instrumentation and atmosphere. Progressive avant-garde metal with catchy hooks that sounds like the music of the past, present and future at the same time. The atmosphere and mood of different epoches are so mixed up here that cognitive dissonance arises (and this is wonderful).
- Psichea. I don’t know if it happened by accident or AD was really inspired by the band Psichea, but I heard enough references and moves. I’m a big fan of them.
- Conceptualization. Unlike releases, which usually pursue only one goal — to make the listener to bang his head or body, this album has a very deep and well-developed philosophical foundation.
Contras:
- People who listen to “fast food” music are unlikely to appreciate this release. And these are the majority.
- I would like to hear more tracks
Top Tracks: “Children Crusade”, “Tacenda”, “WitchSong”
by FatumBlack
