Pelican – The fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw (Hydra Head)
Absolutely beautiful and heavy instrumental rock (Or is it post rock?). Or is it instrumental metal but coming from a hardcore angle? Or it long heavy rock songs influenced by Neurosis, Isis, and Mogwai? I could get geeky and talk about the minor and major 7th chords used by the guitarists and how the two guitarists interact more on this record than their previous two albums, but what does that tell you? From Chicago and this is their 3rd album. Tracks are very long, go through many changes and often have quiet beautiful guitar parts. This album isn’t as heavy as their previous two and they have added acoustic guitars in a few places.
**1. The track spends 30 seconds fading in and then the guitars hit you with an obvious riff. The guitars sing these nice melodic lines for a while. After a couple minutes, the track quiets down and the drums keep a “click” going. One guitar plays feedback and clean individual notes and the other guitar is played with a bow which not only creates a dreamy section not unlike Sigur Ros but also create tension and buildup to some heaviness. They spend the last 1.5 minutes fading out.
**2. Quiet, dreamy beginning like recent Isis. When the riffs show up the track is very catchy but still getting louder and heavier. It’s an odd sound someplace between indie rock and Pink Floyd. The track continues to get heavier and almost reaches full on chugging, head nodding heaviness. There are a couple of surprise changes, including a very discordant guitar section, some double-bass drums, a short return of the opening riff, and a really heavy section near the end.
**3. Darker and more ominous beginning. This track rocks heavier more continuously than the other tracks and reminds me more of their last record. There is a very quiet section about 7 minutes in and what really gets me is that the track is title “March into the Sea” and I think this continues a long line of heavy bands creating a rock sound that does remind me of the ocean. Iron Maiden, Isis, Mastodon and now this.
4. Quiet acoustic guitar. Nice, but doesn’t go very far.
5. A slow churning sound combined with some more standard sounding rock riffs. 3 minutes in this total breaks down into a shimmering, pretty, wall of delayed guitar. They come out of this with pretty, clean individual notes on the guitar. This track goes through a couple more changes before it’s done.
6. Quiet and slightly trippy sound.
7. Slightly quicker, not as heavy, hopeful sound. The track does get louder.
One of the best albums of 2005 -mph