THE OCTOPUS

I think I just found my top album of 2010. "The Octopus" by Amplifier is an ambitious double album sprawled across two hours of wonderful music. Now, normally I would decry the whole idea of even making a double album, as I have had a pretty bad track record when it comes to double albums in the past. The vast majority of the time, I'll find myself bored before I even get to the half-way mark of a double album due to lack of variety or interesting music (*cough* The Wall). I was honestly quite a bit worried that the same would apply for "The Octopus", so color me surprised when I listened to the entirety of the album only to find myself wanting to listen to it again and again.

"The Octopus" shows Amplifier at their very best, and dare I say most progressive. No, I'm not talking about "prog" in the "Look at us, we can create long, bombastic songs with lots of odd time signatures" sense.. but from the beginning of the album all the way to the end, you can hear the band experimenting with different sounds and trying to expand their borders into new territory, to great success.

As far as the actual music is concerned, there are a lot of interesting moments throughout that not only hold the listener's interest throughout the course of the album, but also make the listener want to come back for more. I have a really hard time singling out any individual songs as being weak in any sense of the word. Overall, "The Octopus" is an absolutely fantastic album that begs one question: Where will Amplifier go next?

Update: Just thought I'd express one thought about Amplifier that I think often gets misrepresented on this website. I think a lot of people who see the band listed under the "Psychedelic/Space Rock" category, having not checked out their music before, will probably be disappointed with their music. If anything, I think Amplifier is more well-suited to being listed under "Heavy Prog". They occasionally have spacey moments in their music, and sometimes the space rock themes can be found in some of their songs, but as a whole I wouldn't begin to classify them under this grouping.