Delving into the themes and concepts standing behind albums and bands instead of just focusing on the music has an advantage when writing a review. Since no two world views are alike, there is always something unique to be found there. When you look purely at the music, the similarities between bands and their output might seem manifold, but when you look at the surroundings and circumstances that begot the music, the little differences that you can hear might suddenly become significant and make sense. The background stories, the roots and the different origins of various projects and artist always hold the potential for individuality. The best bands and artists are aware of this fact and use it in order to provide their music with a dash of uniqueness, authenticity and credibility. Only those who don’t know better want to sound like someone else.
Regarding themes and background, a band from New England, and even more so a band from Salem, Massachusetts, playing music of a darker spectrum, have got a richer fundus to borrow ideas from than most other projects. Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King were all born and raised in New England and they produced their works there, inspired by the region’s landscape, architecture, its inhabitants and its history. Nathaniel Hawthorn was born in Salem directly, with his paternal ancestor, Justice John Hathorne, being involved in the infamous Salem Witch Trials. It doesn’t even take much digging in such history-laden places to start seeing your surroundings with completely different eyes, to wonder about the destinies of those who lived there before you – including your own ancestors.
Although the band 1476 and their new album In Exile are not telling stories about witches or houses that have a skull-like exterior – not this time, anyway – the project does engage in some guesswork about lives past, present and future. Their speculations are all based on the ancient question of where do people go when they die? One of the project’s two main protagonists, singer and multi-instrumentalist Robb Kavjian, we have learned, explored that question via meditations and various visualisation techniques, for real persons and imaginary characters, all different, trying to determine who might end up where and with what.
The concept provides an explanation for the album’s great musical diversity, with the band’s sound containing elements of various genres, ranging from folk and rock to metal and punk. And it’s a diversity that makes very much sense if the aim was also to represent and recreate in sound the band’s area of origin with its rich history and the stories of the people that walk(ed) upon its land.
Sometimes, listening to the combination of folk and punk, one might get the impression, that New England should in fact be called New Ireland. At other times, Robb Kavjian’s honest, no-frills vocals performance reminds you of the English working class and The Clash. There is also always a touch of the Occult present, with some passages calling Samhain and Danzig to mind. And every now and then percussionist and drummer Neil DeRosa, the band’s other main protagonist besides Kavjian, makes sure that the listener doesn’t forget what traditionally lies at the heart of black metal.
Despite their diversity, the album’s 11 songs, with a playtime of altogether over an hour, form a cohesive whole, chiefly created by Kavjian’s vocal performance who, taking on the role of a local historian, dutifully leads the listener through destinies and tales while withholding judgement.
Founded in 2007 by Robb Kavjian and Neil DeRosa in Salem, the band 1476 have released with In Exile their fifth long player in total and it looks like it will follow in the footsteps of its predecessor Our Season Draws Near (2017, also Prophecy Productions) which was received very well.
Indeed, there is not much more that you can ask from an album than what In Exile has to offer: Diverse music that you won’t get bored by any time soon, an interesting concept and a background story that invites you to ponder the album’s lyrical content, and an intriguing place of origin offering multiple real-life and fictional threads to explore. Altogether, captivating content for many hours.
To give you a taste, here the official lyrical video to Where Kings Fall which imagines an afterlife for autocratic rulers and features a fair bit of New England’s leftist spirit linking the region additionally to its European roots.
(8/10 Slavica)
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