Sycophantastic 2026
Leaves
Assessing outdoor wonders, Oslo ensemble wander deeper into sonic forests to see the trees from the wood.
While this quartet’s eponymous debut was little short of staggering, it felt a bit too playful in places, which is not the case with two mini-albums that followed the collective’s initial longplay as a sort of dilogy focused on natural wild. Neither “Red Sun” nor “Leaves” never fail to leave the listener in awe of what the Norwegian foursome strive to achieve in terms of arresting tunes and earth-shattering dynamic shifts whose twists and turns seem to be mysteriously labyrinthine, yet at the same time simple in regard to emotions they project. Still, whereas the former EP fell into a Floydian trap, the latter couldn’t sound more original, exploring the frontiers of Scandinavian forlorn mindfulness with a keen ear for expectant nuances.
Whether the three pieces of “Leaves” are accessed individually or as a 23-minute continuous mix, revealing their epic conceptuality, the effect is the same: it’s impossible not to be pulled into these rich tapestries woven of an acoustic yarn and electric filigree, with folk ornaments and metal passages creating organic panoramas. Taking time to demonstrate an entire array of melodic miracles which alternately sooth and startle aural spectators – and spectral arrangements play a major role here – “Roots And Canopy” emerges out of silence on the wave of guitar strum and keyboards ripples. As they gel into an impressive background for haunting vocal harmonies that swirl around Emil Moen’s voice before Per Semb’s rapid-fire riffs sear the surface of what pretended to be a ballad and ebb away, fantastic images fly across one’s mental screen. But when “Mycelium March” arrives to the heavy stomp of Melvin Treider’s drums to stage and wage a prog war, different sensibilities become manifest without acting on their menacing intent.
This task is reserved for the magnificent “Heart Of The Woods” which marries exquisite, Renaissancesque vignettes to hard-rock drive, anchored with Sindre Haugen’s bass, that dissolve into a slider-oiled grandeur, because there’s always a variously-paced movement in there, between soft rustle and angular rumble. The movement to make “Leaves” a masterwork, a tour de force the Oslo ensemble will find difficult to surpass – yet they will have to.
*****
