Inverse 2015
Verisimilitude
Finnish band make a valid point of prog metal’s ability to be fun.
Although Scandinavian heaviness with regards to music tends to take a serious stance, this ensemble don’t bother with a menace. Instead, they let their hair down and dance like there’s no tomorrow, and the quintet’s third full-length album crystallizes such an approach by taking it to the extremes. The record’s title gets palpable on the optimistically shining finale “Dear Mr. Steele” – what can be more true or real than iron? – while the orchestral sway of “Absurdoscope” highlights everything that’s deceptive out there.
The listener is hooked from the start, once Ines Lukkanen piles up her vocal harmonies for “Shame, Spin & Click” before the wall of sound rolls on, thick yet dynamically breathing, as Tero Kalliomäki’s peels jazzy licks off his guitar for the salvo to subside. It does with the acoustic flamenco fluttering of “Flamer” and folk reverie of “Thimble” and rises again for these pieces’ choral swirl which unfolds into an art-rock tapestry, whereas the equally cinematic “Moths” floats on a spaghetti western twang. And if “Hang Me High” hides a pagan intent, the elegant “Of Matters Dark And Grey” goes for a seductively slow flow of a vaudeville stripe only to unleash an onslaught between its sultry lines.
Far from silence, the versatility of EOS rings true, indeed.
****1/3
