Avoid The Light

Modern, heavy post-rock (I’d almost more consider it prog rock sans vocals). Ranges from brooding to ethereal, often within one track. As if Mogwai found their way back to the epic side of post-rock, mixed in with some Russian Circles, Red Sparowes, Jakob and a healthy dose of label-mates Oceansize. REX: 1, 5, 2

1. Great opening, synthy start before breaking out into a pretty straight-forward post-rock, emphasis on the rock. Pulls back, then re-enters as a grooving, bass-heavy track. Evolves back into a rocking piece, lots of distortion and riffing for a grand finale (some cool noisy samples, too!)

2. A little NIN-esque or Tool-ish... really interesting take on where post-rock could go when mixed with some healthy metal (although nothing like the doom + gloom from Pelican or ISIS).

3. Brooding, bass-heavy, very very Jakob. Eventually turns into a kinda mediocre, sparse rocker, but only for about 30 seconds. Afterwards, turns into one of the more beautiful harmony sections on the record... unfortunate.

4. Ambient, spacey, Pink Floyd “Echoes” sort of intro. Drum fill drops us into another heavy rocker. Definitely the most metal track on the album, half-time-sections-cutting-to-drum-and-bass-only and all. Then, synth bloops? Builds back into a beautiful ending section, followed by a brief metal outro

5. Some vocals on this one! Delay-ridden guitars, moody, good vocals + harmonies. A little down and dark, but still a highlight. (as far as I could tell, no FCC problems, but the lyrics are hard to really make out)

6. Great drums-only intro, minimalist guitar riff, shimmering second guitar, UFO synth, builds and builds and builds... ends up at a very Knights of Cydonia section about half-way through, getting moodier and heavy for the climax/outro. Outro also fades in a cool acoustic guitar.

--21echoes