EVERYONE INTO POSITION

If Oceansize's first album was a masterpiece, which it was, then this album is about as close to perfection as anything. What an amazing album. It is a testament that amazing music is still being produced. The genre is still somewhere between post rock and progressive metal. However, the sound is even more dynamic than before, the vocals are improved, even though they were great before, the music is more emotional and there is a more varied sound. The band is definitely doing an excellent job exploring sounds. I feel that in this album, Oceansize found their own sound. Many listeners say it is more straight forward than their previous album, and while that might be true, it is certainly a step forward for them. Their music has been fine tuned to almost perfection.

I really love this album. There is still the hardness from the previous album, but there are some amazing soft parts throughout the album and it rounds things out very well. The album starts out with "The Charm Offensive" which is reminiscent of the debut album and you get the impression that this is going to be great like the last one. You get that post-metal atmosphere but with a lot of expression, great vocals and a lot of ingenuity. In between the first track and the 2nd, there is a hidden track which starts off soft but builds quickly and sounds almost like a return to "The Charm Offensive", but this does have an official title called "emp(erical) error". It is easy to mistake this as an extension of the first track. Next comes "Heaven Alive" which is definitely a more mainstream sounding track, but still an excellent song. The vocals are still to the forefront and there is a nice solid baseline. Towards the last part of the song, the chorus becomes a multi-layered vocal that sounds almost like a choir of sorts that along with that ever present bass line, is an exciting and enticing sound. I love this track. Then you get the last of the 1-2-3 punch with the explosive "A Homage to Shame". This one is a solid track, very hard, very emotional and simply astounding. The multi-layered vocals return here but this time the choir has been turned upside down almost giving an opposite effect of the previous track. This has to be heard. That takes up the first part of the album.

Next we move on to more amazing music, albeit a little more mellow but still with a lot of substance, emotion and excellent musicianship. "Meredith", even though it is not as hard as the previous track, is a very complex song with changing and challenging percussion. The drums throughout this album are just plain awesome, beating out rhythms that normally would not match the meter of the songs at times, but still sounding excellent. It gives the songs a more sense of sophistication and originality, there is just no staleness in this album anyway. After this great track, we get the epic masterpiece and also one of my all time favorite songs "Music for a Nurse." How do you describe this piece of art? Now it seems that Oceansize is digging deeper into the post rock sound, adding some space rock, taking the style of the best Sigur Ros song structure, adding their signature multi-layered voice sound, tuning the vocals down further into the total mix (ala Devin Townsend style) and doing this they created an epic masterpiece that just sends shivers down my spine. The format of the song is pretty typical post-rock structure, starting out soft and simple and building to an amazing climax. The difference here is the beauty of the melody, which is based upon a complex chord structure and repeated with the plucked notes of the guitar strings. This is an old Classical Music style called a Ground where the melody is played by the low notes while other counter-melodies and variations are played around that base. The melody that provides the base for the song is beautiful and when the song starts, it is almost the only thing you hear, very much like a Sigur Ros song. Other guitars and percussion and more multi-layered vocals get added in and keep building the music as the emotions continues to build and the tension rises throughout the song. You end up with an orchestral sounding wall of music. Simply amazing!

Continuing on with the album, you get more amazing music, challenging rhythms in places, from this point of the album, the vocals usually stay mixed into the music so they become part of the entire song. I love this method of mixing the voices down into the music and like I said earlier, this is the same method that Devin Townsend uses and also why I love his sound so much also. The music continues to be excellent and original, but it wasn't enough for Oceansize to have just one epic masterpiece on this album. The last track "Ornaments/The Last Wrongs" is another excellent track and ends the album on a high note. This one is more dependent upon sudden dynamic changes, from soft to hard passages throughout and once again with those amazing multi-layered vocals that I love.

I like to compare this kind of music to Classical Music, but this is Progressive rock's version of Classical. It is complex, dynamic, original, emotional. It has it all. My own personal rating system uses 5 stars like ProgArchives, but I also add a 6th star for the albums that I think are perfect. There are not many albums that I consider 6 star albums, so I don't use it very often, only when I find something simply amazing that moves me beyond words. This is one of those albums. Of course, I can only rate this with 5 stars here, but to me, it is better than the debut album, and that is also a 5 star album. Really, I love this album that much. I love the fact that this band progressed even further than on the previous album, that they have made their own sound here. The previous album was compared to Tool, but this album explores into territory that is only touched by the experts, namely Kayo Dot, Sigur Ros, King Crimson, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and so on. They not only explored these sounds, but they carved their own niche in this music style. Excellent album, definitely essential in my opinion, this one should be considered one of the best modern progressive albums. But that's enough praise from me. Don't keep putting this one off so long like I did. Listen to it and hear the level of emotion present. Even if you aren't dripping with praise the way I am, you will still probably agree that this is some of the best new prog available. 5 glowing stars!