As both a music fan and a reviewer there are few things quite as heart-warming as a band who went from leaving you cold to slightly perplexing you to that brilliant moment when your jaw drops and you suddenly realise what you’ve been missing. Thus, was my journey with Countless Skies, and all through live performances.
This then is their second full length after 2016s magnificent New Dawn album. And what do they play, you who do not know ask? Well with the gentle lap of waves and a trill of keyboards that whisper between the spaces of Rush and Marillion, a pulsing beat rises and….then the riff. Heavy but surging forwards on a huge melody. Death vocals come in and….then like something out of a sped up While Heaven Wept the huge clean vocals pull the melody upwards and…my chest just fills with the need to sing along. Melodeath, a prog heart, sumptuous arrangement and bright production. The beautiful guitar breaks like light on a horizon. ‘Tempest ‘.
Welcome to Countless Skies.
‘Summit’ begins with that huge sound once more, massed choral vocals (guests, including Vicky Harley) and a melodic looping guitar hook. Then…oof… The blast knocks you out of your socks but it still holds the melody tightly. A touch of the symphonic here as cellist Arianna Mahssayeh joins (a familiar musician to many metal fans now, which is great) and… Oh this just is beautiful and magnificent. The arrangement is elegant; layered but not fussy, the prog feel just naturally following the metal.
‘Moon’ once again shows a perfect mix of vocals death and clean, the guitars and keyboards conjuring Marillion gone melodeath and the hookline just…ah.. magnificent. Countless Skies have this perfect touch moving between tempos, dipping into introspective movements and then as if raising their eyes to the sun the melodeath hits the driving gear and we’re soaring without a break, without a jolt.
‘Zephyr’ begins gently; a little Rush like before the familiar Countless Skies personality opens up. Thoughtful, lyrical, poetic. They’ll probably hate me but even a touch of Foals at their absolute best might be heard here just before that riff hits. And hit it does. The use of both death and clean vocals works perfectly and I am so glad they still use them all to add to the light and shade which make up their epic music.
And then ‘Glow’. Either three tracks linked or one 20-minute composition (and the bandcamp version has both…yep money where my mouth is, bought the CD). Too much to explain and, besides you will find it yourself. Explore. The cello in the first movement, that towering cathedral of sound in the second. Those clean vocals….
The world goes a little misty.
The emotional impact Countless Skies can deliver is quite literally stunning; the times listening this album where I found myself just gazing into the far distance as their music held me was incredible. They layer music beautifully, never weighing it down with pointless complexity and additions but still using their glorious musicianship to its full, every small elegant stitch essential to the tapestry. The vocals carry true emotion in them, the compositions take you places..
This is simply world class. Its appeal should cross genre boundaries – I can see fans of black metal like Saor, symphonic metal fans, power metal fans, the melodeath brigade all finding so much within this.
Beautiful. Emotional. Virtuoso.
Countless Skies. Without a doubt one of the best bands of any genre in the UK.
(9.5/10 Gizmo) and I’m probably being mean
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