It’s been a while since Pelican last released a fill-length album. Not that they’ve been idle: the ‘Ataraxia / Taraxis’ EP last year was a more than ample confirmation that they weren’t suffering from writer’s block. They’ve been on the road with the new line-up (exit founding guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec, enter new second guitarist Dallas Thomas) over the last couple of years, and the resultant studio material bears testament to a band that have meshed to perfection.
Thunderous percussion and howling feedback akin to a jet engine taking off presage the arrival of Pelican’s latest offering. Hailed as leading exponents of post metal, they’ve always managed to combine intelligent, expansive passages of ponderous delicacy with crushing riffs, and on ‘Forever Becoming’ they do so simultaneously: a sludgy drone of bass underpins a chiming guitar that weaves back on itself on ‘Terminal’.
‘Deny the Absolute’ kicks up the tempo and brings with it real attack – but it’s anything but meathead metal, and the delicate lead guitar that snakes beneath the welter of noise is anything but squealy-note fretwankery. They do the chugging thing nicely, and never overdo it, and while there’s some serious force and substantial power here, it’s nicely balanced and textured rather than a blunt, brutal assault.
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‘The Tundra’ jabs and pummels and is perhaps the most mercilessly metal track on the album, and it works well in context as the band lead the listener through a succession of different sonic and emotional landscapes. It’s also undeniably proggy, but succeeds in not being po-faced or pompous. ‘Immutable Dusk’ builds through post-pock ponderance to a full-throttle metal crescendo. The eight-minute ‘Threnody’ is nothing short of staggering in its intensity, and not surprisingly, the final track, ‘Perpetual Dawn’ – almost 10 minutes in duration – is epic in every sense.
Four years in the making, and most certainly worth the wait.
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