THE UNRAVELLING

The Unravelling is my first encounter with "Knifeworld's" music and one of the last record's from 2014 I am going to review before I will sum the year for myself. I had read some reviews and seen some opinions stating this was the best album of the year and in relation to a quite small interest here I though it was interesting to investigate it. Knifeworld is a British band which made their first studio record 2009 and now 2014 they did their second one: "The Unravelling". I wouldn't say the cover is spectacular but it is different, especially in this genre but I like its purity and strong colours.

The list of musicians is quite long and that is probably one of the reasons this music is so interesting. The band is developped around Kavus Torabi, the guitarist and vocalist and he plays with the vocalist/percussionist Melanie Woods, the keyboardist Emmett Elvin, the bassist Charlie Cawood, the drummer Ben Woollacutt, the bassoonist, saxophonist and vocalist Chlöe Herington and the saxophonists Josh Perl and Nicki Maher. I must say it's so wonderful to hear bassoon and saxophone in prog rock and that's really making the music as good as it is. I haven't had so many experiences with bassoon, one of them is Stravinskij's "Rite of spring", but I can say that only that music in rock is a reason to listen to this album.

Knifeworld's music is well played, interesting, fine vocals from different persons, nice sweaping melodies and I got memories from Gentle Giant's, Gryphon's and Beardfish's music now during my listenings. I found the music fresh and unlike the most music I had heard, but always vibrant and colourful. The whole album is great but is has some highlights I would recommend as the first to hear: "Send him seaworthy" which has an uncompromising melody and a lovely bassoon play(9/10), "Destroy the world we love"(8/10) which has some Beardfish'-like parts, "I can teach you how to lose a fight"(8/10) which is a sum of the album, "Don't land on me" a long and inspiring song(8/10) and "The skulls we burried have regrown their eyes"(8/10) which is a little scary but interesting horror song. The whole album is great but the shortest song is the least interesting.

As a totally new encounter I was very pleased to like this as much as I did and Knifeworld is definitely a group I will follow and relisten to. I will rate this record with four stars(3.75)!