AXIOM

I love this band and I love it when they release an album that is well done. However, throughout their discography, they have had a few misses. This particular album falls somewhere in the middle in my opinion. It is a concept album, but I am not familiar with the story behind it yet, so it might be loosely based upon a religious theme. But it seems also to be somewhat dark and has a very ambient feeling to it. There are 3 excellent tracks and 4 that are mediocre and I find them repetitive. The best tracks are 1, 2, and 5. They are beautiful, dark and inventive. The others are too repetitive but are nice if you are listening to them to relax and fall asleep except for the fact that they are dark and might influence your mind to give you some bad dreams. This is probably not the best place to start if you are interested in hearing some of their music, I would suggest the album "You All Look the Same to Me" or "Controlling Crowds" as the place to start investigating their music. This band is quite popular in some European countries and sometimes I think their taste is a lot better than what I hear on a lot of American Radio lately. Another band that has a huge following overseas and not so big in America is Porcupine Tree, so let that be something you can measure that comment by. BTW, Archive is not like Porcupine Tree, their sound is more electronic and considered by some as trip hop. But don't let that scare you away, I am not much of a trip hop fan, but I do like Archive for the most part for their inventiveness, their inclusion of prog elements in a lot of their music, and the variety and beauty of their music. Unfortunately, even though this is a good album, it is below what I expect from this great band.

1. Distorted Angels with a unique title, a unique air, a space far from the system, emphatic, emblematic, cinematic title, a magnificent progressive intro for 2. Axiom and its latent air, Gregorian synth, bells, oh there it goes far; redundant yes but progressive... these bells amalgamate and burst, the sound becomes distressing, an archaic bass comes surreptitiously to prick up our ears, would we have arrived in Paradise? A slow synth agony takes the pad, and 3. Baptism follows, always this syncopated atmosphere, a ersatz of sounds a priori tampered which allow to give in the strange with these breaks 'sufficed by undergone' and the latency which ends; an innovative air with a final synth-prog rise with a trying rhythmicity, with this bass reminiscent of the 'Meddle' of PINK FLOYD, in short beauty.

4. Transmission Data Terminate continues the musical story; the sound is primary, the vocal phrasing, the invasive pads, hold on to some acoustic DEPECHE MODE, paradoxical; Maria Q intervenes while the air rises; 5. The Noise of Flames Crashing follows, that's also the blood prog side with the notion of the concept album and these stuck, tangled titles; voices from elsewhere, an invasive, spatial sound, between two worlds; an anathemaesque, tearful air, from the musical origin to a passage towards what we are not prepared for? In short, intensely avant-garde 6. Shiver follows, the electric piano of ANATHEMA I confirm; a ballad out of time with this piano that never ends and the muffled voice which by taking up a basic refrain provokes the lack; a long, captivating crescendo whose end is actually the beginning of 7. Axiom (reprise) with again these aggressive bell volleys, this dithyrambic bass, these layers of fat keyboards, this contained violence which makes this album a progressive must, whatever one may say; the bells return to the charge, on the memory of 'Breaking the Waves' for the Olympian, religious finale.