Review Summary: Something is definitely not rotten in the state of Finland.
Is there some kind of hidden connection between Quebec, Finland, and Arizona? Do they draw air off branches of a common ionospheric or stratospheric jetstream? Does the drinking water in these separate corners of the northern hemisphere coincidentally have similar mineral compositions, or is their tap water supplied by shared giant underground/undersea pipelines? As for musical inspiration, such questions are of course entirely senseless in a globalized age where shared identities are born, wiped out, and just as soon pop up again with the speed of soundbites travelling over ethers and interwebs. All this to say that the musical stamp of Exocosm's
Spiral of Decay does not come out of nowhere. Thus the style, vibe, instrumental attack, and sci-fi aesthetic of this Finnish prog/thrash outfit's debut sits near the middle between Droid (CAN - check 'em out) and Vektor, while showing clear ancestral references to Canadian groundbreakers Obliveon and Voivod. Fortunately, epigonism is not the essence of this album. While undoubtedly there - the opening minutes of the album initially had me expecting a full-length spin-off of Vektor's
Outer Isolation -, it is embraced as a vantage point and serves as a means to a musical end, setting the stage for a series of otherwise varied, creative pieces with their own distinctive character.
Tightly picked riffs are laced with fuzzy, mid-voiced distortion. Vocal delivery is half-low and raspy. Snare, cymbals and toms are pleasantly prominent in the mix, as is the bass. Songwriting is balanced, subtle and mature. The right amount of variation in pace, tension, themes, clean vs distorted passages, chord progressions, angularity vs straightforwardness, silent vs loud, meandering lead guitar melodies, palm-muted vs open ringing notes, always keeps one looking forward to the next development. Listening to the album is simultaneously soothing and exciting, as it were; it is fascinatingly not boring. The jazzy fusion interlude in between speedy thrash hooks and crash cymbal frenzy in 'Surreality'; the rich distorted textures and harmonies of 'Spiritual Killing'; the duelling left and right guitar lines with the bass throwing in its own angle on the story in 'Last World'; oh and half-dirty passages with hints of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath in the title track? It all comes off as natural and flows self-evidently. The feel of delineation between songs is relative as every track seems to make up an episode in a continuous development of musical movements and themes, strung together as a story line to the album as a whole. Title track 'Spiral of Decay' echoes and summarizes this development within the boundaries of one song; but it is far from the only one to do so.
Two minutes short of the end of closer 'Sunset Vista' - also the longest track with its 8+ minutes - was the first time I caught myself thinking this could have been a tad shorter. Let's see if you hold out as long as I did. What have you got to lose?
