Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Album Review: "Breach | Submerge" by Cetacean

Breach | Submerge
Famous metal historians, The Beastie Boys, once claimed during the song No Sleep Till Brooklyn, NEVER EVER FALSE METAL!

Since that line was uttered by the punk rockers turned rappers turned punk rockers turned punk rappers turned hipsters who didn't know what they were, there's been a seismic shift.

The rallying cry of Death To False Metal can be found on shirts, hats, and probably coffee mugs.

In the past I've spoken about the tribunal of heavy metal and it's still very much alive. In the past 25 years, Black Metal, Folk Metal, Pagan Metal, and whatever Steve'n'Seagulls are have all worked hard to change what metal is and what it can be.

Growing up listening to Black Sabbath, it was just a guitar, a bass, drums, and vocals. Then keyboards, later banjos, and whatever instruments they have in Finland. Recently a band from Canada was playing a French Horn....

Cetacean
Cetacean was suggested in the email related if you like Pink Floyd, and a bunch of other metal bands.

The Pink Floyd was what caught my eye.

Nearly 50 years ago, when Piper At The Gates of Dawn was released, would we have ever thought this band would have moved so far in just another ten short years?

Cetacean, like Pink Floyd, are fans of the saxophone. The opening track features a smooth sax solo. As the song clocks in over ten minutes, the sax solo is all but truncated. For a time, it had me wondering if the streaming link was broken.

It was not.

Cetacean is a band that takes what they know and what blackened metal is and put them together. This sextet of gentlemen is more than just the bare bones metal approach.

The bigger the box of the crayons, the more vibrant the picture is wont to be. Cetacean takes, presumably, a single idea and then builds and builds on it.

The vocals are predictably angsty and painful, when they're not choral, or melodic. The guitars are crunchy and never overshadow the less than standard instrumentation.

Put this album in your vinyl collection.

Release: Out now/Vinyl Release 5/27
Genre: Avant Garde Black Metal
Label: Apes Who Looked Up Records
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