SERENE

2015 was an amazing year for the Progrockers and that is why I did not expect to stumble upon such an amazing rarity once again, while catching up on a few things I missed out on last year. Yet it happened, and when you bump into such an amazing band known by absolutely no one, you just need to get the word out. So, this is Delvoid, hailing from the frosty Nordics again. Surprised?

Their second album, Serene, is not an easy listen. I actually started off by rating it 4 stars, but just until its complexity grew on me with each and every hit of the play button, eventually leaving me speechless with how varied and mature this album is, especially from a band of such young age. Calling themselves a follower of Sigur rós and Tool I certainly see why the latter one is mentioned in their biography and hearing this album I must throw in a bit of Aussie Prog too (like Karnivool or Caligula's horse) as well as a big fat pinch of ISIS, for how atmospheric and psychedelic (yet heavy!) they are. Be alarmed though, before you sit down to dwell into the world of Serene, that you are looking at an ambitious voyage clocking in at not less than 75 minutes. Lucky for the listener, there are no two consecutive songs on this album that would sound the same. After a bit of an intro you get a true taste of what this band is good at right away with Cocoon, which is a bad-ass track with a superslow build-up into some post-metal joy. When Alex Delver in the last one minute of the song starts screaming the refrain into the mic, it is exactly when you realize how strong they are in the vocal department and how much it adds to the end result along with their moderate, yet perfectly proportioned post-metal sound. Do not lean back on the chair though, because along comes one of the absolute highlights of the album with the next track, Steambreather. This song probably has one of the most explosive and cleverly built-up rock riffs I have ever heard and I do not believe I need to add much more to this. To make you at ease at this point, the next track, Transient, is a more laid-back one, probably reminding me of The Assassination of Jesse James soundtrack more than of anything else I have heard from this band before, thanks to the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra's guest strings that bring in some nice melodies. Other highlights of the album include the again more melodic, yet quite explosive Dissembler (great drum-work and vocals again), the totally Tool-sounding Carrier or the ambitious, 18-minute-long title track, peaking in a powerful, mega-psychedelic finale, just before they would wrap up the album with the outro.

To sum up, Delvoid's second album is one memorable journey, which is at times, and this is the only bad thing I can say about the album, overly simple in its riffs (the track Diffused e.g., or the first part of Carrier), however, if I look at how much these small build-ups are needed for their explosive crescendos to work, I can even turn a blind eye on this. And not even being able to picture how dynamic these guys might look on stage (I have not yet had the luck to see them), until I catch them live I will be doing nothing but looking forward to their next album, which will hopefully even bring a bit of well-deserved fame for them also, helping them find their way to a wider audience, which I am sure will inevitably happen, if they keep doing what they do. Five stars and a must-hear.