EARTHKIND

The album starts off with a lovely introduction "Then and Now" which features lovely synth washes that are very symphonic, piano, strings and drums. The music is very stirring and cinematic. "Aiden's Theme" adds in some organ and soon settles in with a straightforward rhythm mixing the organ with the orchestral sounding synths. The music continues to develop off of the thematic elements developed in the first track. It is faster moving, but still retains a dramatic feel. A guitar comes in later for a short stint, but the organ and synth soon take over again. There are short intermediary tracks called "The Last Soldier" throughout the album, and the first one, subtitled "Aftermath" follows. This uses metallic sounding drones that create some unease. "Fall of Vallopel" soon returns things to the more straitforward sound, featuring processed guitars followed by a more traditional electric guitar playing the melody. Different guitar styles and layers produce different elements of the melody. The sound gets a bit heavier as darker guitar lines churn along with a synth helping to push things along.

"The Drowning Girl" features several sound effects such as a sharp wind blowing and and other movement. Dark synths and drums come in and build up tension and this leads into "The Rescue". The music definitely has a soundtrack style to it, but is quite melodic at the same time. The music is still a bit dark here, and a bit dramatic, but no real melody emerges between the layers of guitars and synths as the music sounds like it should be accompanying some visual. At times, the guitars keep things a bit heavy as they bump off deep riffs which often get interrupted by synth passages. "Together Alone" is mostly a keyboard solo, a piano that has a distant quality to it along with echo. Some orchestral effects support things later adding strings. "One Life" follows on the heels of this build up, continuing with guitars underlaying synths and at times, leading the pack with short melodies. Bits of progressive sections are thrown in from time to time, but it remains pretty straightforward and cinematic, still carrying forward with the dramatic soundtrack style.

This is the way the album continues all the way through. The music sounds very much like a movie soundtrack, very symphonic and cinematic, but no real themes seems to stick out much. The music might be interesting to those that like soundtrack style music, somewhat similar to "The Enid" or such, but there isn't a lot of progressive sound in there. It's all pretty average sounding, and might work well for background music, but doesn't really have much to hold my interest, and it definitely goes on a bit too long. It's nice, but not really spectacular, maybe even a bit too restrained, and nothing really seems to get developed much. It's okay, but definitely not essential.