IN A COLD EMBRACE

I had very high expectations for this album given the number of 5-star reviews by so many PA reviewers. Unfortunately I have come away from this album very disappointed. I have several Post/Rock-Math/Rock albums on my mp3 player and I'm not sure how this band (at least this album) fits into this category when compared to bands such as Don Caballero and GY!BE. To me this is not really prog, at least not in the way I have defined it for my own listening tastes. It was a real struggle for me to listen to this the entire way through, I found myself tempted to skip to the next track for the entire duration. When I hear this I get more of a 'new age' feel with a dark twist, combined with a lot of melancholy atmospheres that just drone on & on. The usage of sound FX was generally okay but at times I found them a little obtrusive and contrary to what it seemed like the music was trying to accomplish.

It's not entirely a mellow album as there are slight edges to to the music here at times, but these are few and far between. I found many sections of the album to simply drag on far too long, just not particularly interesting arrangements. I kept waiting for the album to take off and go somewhere, but the songs play it safe throughout and stick to the same droning melancholy moods with scattered bits of tempo change here and there.

I'm also having trouble with the mix itself, I hear a lot of clipping particularly when there are bombastic moments of percussion and bass...I'm certain this wasn't intentional (hopefully it wasn't anyway), but the clipping is really noticeable. The worst occurrences of this are during heavier sections of "Comrade/The Way We Grieve" and the final track " The Semblance of Fate/Citizen". I really hear the peaks flattening which could suggest it was mastered too loudly or perhaps individual tracks were simply too hot when originally recorded. Unfortunately I would not recommend this album to any prog fan I know.