LUMINARIA

Put simply, one of the best albums I've ever heard in my life. Mix is great, the songs are varied but cohesive, and the playing is immaculate. I'll take it track by track: Prelude/Cradle is a great opener, the first is really just an intro for the latter and it does a great job of setting the tone before we dive headfirst into the instrumental madness of Cradle. Strong lyrical performance on top of the trademark "cozy metal" that AVIATIONS is known for. Nothing "new" for them really but a solid track that has earned several plays from me in the few days since release. Safehouse is probably my favorite song this year. It's an incredibly fun track that sounds like the most nutty pop punk song ever and also has a breakdown that pushes toward extreme metal before fading back to accessibility. Consistently fresh for sure. Legend is a bit of a hard sell for people who don't like metal screams, but this track does a pretty good job of not relying on insane extreme metal moments the whole length. There's even a great bluesy guitar solo and intense... piano solo? These guys are perhaps the best at working piano into their metal music. La Jolla and Pinenut, while good and fun tracks in their own right, do not immediately jump out to the listener as being too far removed from the AVIATIONS canon of sounds. Even after a half dozen plays each, the most I can say is that these are pleasant tracks that aren't the most memorable. That may change with time though! Pure is a masterpiece of a track that sounds like Clairvoyant-era THE CONTORTIONIST and has just as much emotional weight as that album. Beautiful soundscape and slow build up. Adam's voice steals the show on this track especially. Where We've Been is a great interlude between the emotional ballad Pure and the full scale prog epic Coma. Incorporates some minor electronic elements and motifs from other tracks on the album and also is reminiscent of Lullaby from their previous full length album The Light Years. Coma is quite the ride of a song, blitzing by with speed and precision and more piano features. Adam does a few more screams on this song but it's temporary if that's not your thing - only about 10 seconds of this 10 minute song. Blink is the sleeper track on the album and a great closer - it is somehow the most musically sporadic yet catchiest track of all. The math rock riffing is in full force as arpeggios fly from the guitars and piano, all backed up by some extremely tight drumming. But it's the vocal hooks that have stuck with me the most and lured me back to this song in particular. The final line quotes the Prelude, bookending the album very nicely and lending more credence to the experience of listening all the way through. When I found out that they were dropping 5 singles prior to release, I was worried that I would either grow weary of them or would be unsurprised when the album finally came out. Glad to say that neither happened and I think this deserves to be a contender for Album of the Year, not just for metal or prog but for music in general. Anyone who appreciates the marriage of technicality and enjoyable songwriting should enjoy this album (with the only exceptions being Legend and the screams on Coma perhaps).