If a picture paints a thousand words, then Scaphoid got off to a great start with the artwork on “Absent Passages”. I found myself mesmerised by the shadowy image of a crumbling city by a river. And with instrumental prog rock-metal as here, it’s important that those sounds develop into pictures.
I let the music do the talking, and what I immediately heard was an intricate, beguiling pattern. “Marauder” is calm on the face of it, but there is an air of both lush expanse and a mild threat. The structure has an undeniable element of Opeth about it. The gentle transformation of moods from calm to one of heightened tension and drama is underwritten by fluidity. “Marauder” ends suddenly in full flow, which was a pity, and gives way to the more melancholic and dreamier soundscape of “Shores of Ruin”. The patterns are deliberate and technical, but like a journey it feels that he guitar and drum work is taking us somewhere and telling us something. “None So Blind” is another delightfully crisp and evocative ditty. I’m not sure how its title relates to the colourful tune but hey, it’s nice anyway. The technical finery continues on the slower and darker “Melpomene”. I preferred the enticing beginning of “Celestial Ego” and way it subtly creates instrumental wisps of cloud while having a darker edge. “Celestial Ego” is something exciting.
If ever there was a title for the times, it’s “Coldness of Clarity”. A sombre piano piece takes us into a blizzard of progressive despair, before an acoustic piece takes us back to the piano and an epic post-metal style crescendo. “The Narrows” continues the sombre theme, impressing as always with its patient but intricate guitar work, and an injection of haunting keyboard work. The 14 minute “Infrastricken” closes the album so it’s fair to assume that this is going to be a major piece. The start has the structure of an Opeth track again, with a djenty prog underscore. Off we float into an ethereal dream world and very nice it is too. The build-up is patient and while not full of twists and turns, there’s plenty of energy and dark atmosphere. A great strength of this album is that it is intense without being introspective, as sometimes progressive music is. This, and in particular “Infrastricken”, is all out there. It is a well-crafted and powerful piece of prog metal.
Unlike the cover art which always had the advantage of being visual, I struggled always to convert the music into pictures in my mind as it occasionally ascended but more often built structured patterns around a more obscure static base. Even without having a thread to hang on to at times, I still enjoyed “Absent Passages”. Crisp and clear, it is very pleasant to listen to, and instrumentally it is interesting and expertly executed.
(8/10 Andrew Doherty)
Leave a Reply