Review Summary: Echo Tail has found its voice, and it is full of emotions.
Since releasing their first album in 2014 (Mirroring), Echo Tail have released five more albums. Needless to say that in two years, this band has been very busy. Introducing vocals in Fields Of Vision, their previous record, the band has continuously evolved into their latest sound, "Drowning The Pacific". While the beginning of their discography revolved around instrumentals in the metal and post-metal genre, Mark Stebbing (mastermind of the band) and his brother Tom have since been incorporating more diverse and experimental sounds to their composition.
The album's opener, Pacific, is the perfect example of how the band has evolved. Starting off on a calm and clean riff, the vocals are full of emotions and drive the song towards an explosion of saturated guitar riffs. The leads present on this song are outstanding and are probably the best part of this album. Mark really knows how to create melodic and perfectly fitting guitar leads, whether acoustic on 'Ends To A Mean' or electric on 'Pacific'. Although present on one song in Fields Of Vision, the vocals are the main new feature of this record, and they work perfectly. In fact, they add a whole new dimension of emotions with the lyrics and the intensity of the singing. Most of the time they are calm, but a few times Mark screams like on Pacific.
Although the compositions feel perfectly thoughtout, they sometimes end abruptly and leaves you feeling like a little more time to think about an ending would have been necessary. The perfect example for this is the ending of 'Season of Violence', where the song ends on a fading repetitive guitar riff. Talking about a repetitive pattern, the record relies a little bit too much on the high pitch tremolo picking. Although it creates a mystical atmosphere, the repetition over the whole record makes it lose its importance and feels almost like listening to the same song over again. What saves the record from that feeling is the little variations like at the end of 'A Shadow Among Us' that fades into a Pink Floyd-esque beginning for Midori.
The atmosphere created by Echo Tail is the one of the Post-Rock/metal genre with a touch of progressive rock. Although this release isn’t a concept album, the lyric’s theme focuses on problems of trust and secret revealing. Finding highlight on this record is a little hard as the whole album flows perfectly (minor a few endings) but some songs stand out, mostly thanks to the leads and songwriting. Those songs are the opener Pacific, the closer In The Absence of Faith and Ends to a Mean.
Drowning the Pacific is definitely a move forward for Echo Tail. The addition of vocals really sent the band towards more emotional composition. Whether the band will continue in that direction is unknown, but Mark hinted that he will probably take a break and continue in the indie rock or electronic spectrum, being more comfortable for his vocal range. Whatever the future of this band will be, they can be proud of their work and this record shows their ability to evolve into new territories and still have a creative mind after seven releases in two years.
