https://youtu.be/HFHpGqwBUn8

Audiotree session

Album Rating: 4.0

Feel like I want the guitar to hit harder on that session. I feel like the only thing I hear are Josh (drums are a highlight, what a beast) Jim, the backing tracks, guitar solos, then rhythm parts and bass, in that order.

Album Rating: 3.5

Maybe that's because they're 4 now

Album Rating: 4.0

I've gone back and forth about this album since its release, but I think it's finally starting to click. "Mute" has some really powerful stuff in it.

Album Rating: 4.0

Kinda fell off for me outside of Mute

Album Rating: 3.5

I listen to a lot of music in my car these days, but the way this is mixed makes it sound extremely washed out in there. It does sound better through headphones, but yes. Annoying.

Album Rating: 4.0

This album was massively overshadowed for me by Slifts release but I've been hooked on this all week. Great musicians and songwriters and the vocals are superb

Album Rating: 4.5

This is so easily this band's first or second best album it's not even funny. The charcoal grace suite alone is the best thing this band has done

Album Rating: 4.0

I love this whole album except part two's lyrics about sorry for everything, even what I said to your mom, I miss you, please call me back. Like what the fuck are those lyrics?

Album Rating: 4.5

I think this is finally starting to match the quality of their Bloom-RR run. Opener is just epic. The title suite has many moments were it is kinda dragging but has many great moments and Give Me Hell closes the suite off in the best way. Some of their best work to date in that part. Sails is just beautiful with, again, some of their best melodies to date. Just waiting for the rest of the album to click with me a tad more.

Album Rating: 4.0

I think after some time this has gotten to my top3 fav albums from them, winning very slightly with Bloom for the 3rd spot

Album Rating: 4.5

I think this will stay quite firmly at fourth for me. Rise Radiant was the album I discovered them with so lots of bias there. Bloom has stronger hooks imo. In Contact is just their best.

Album Rating: 4.0

Still relatively new to this band but everything I have heard across 4 of their albums is just incredible. This is the only band I have discovered that hits that Pain of Salvation itch for me since I am currently burned out on that discography at the moment but still want "this" sound.

Album Rating: 4.5

Yep, on my 50th playthrough I think this deserves a 4.5. This band is so insanely consistent.

Album Rating: 4.0

“ I love this whole album except part two's lyrics about sorry for everything, even what I said to your mom, I miss you, please call me back. Like what the fuck are those lyrics?”



From what I understand, the Charcoal Grace suite is about a family during the COVID era. Mom and son seem to be on the same page, but dad has bought into conspiracy theories. From what I understand, these lyrics are from the father’s perspective, pleading for the son to talk to him. The father is on his deathbed due to totally avoidable reasons (COVID presumably), and still can’t admit he was actually wrong, and thinks he’s the main character in everyone’s life (“a world without me is just not enough”). He dies in Vigil, and Give Me Hell is about the son not really being able to forgive the father even after he dies, and has quite a dark outlook on it moving forward. (“I will bear this hate into the depths to see you choke on it. Hell is real.”)

Album Rating: 4.0

Double post

"I love this whole album except part two's lyrics about sorry for everything, even what I said to your mom, I miss you, please call me back. Like what the fuck are those lyrics?"

lmao yea I'm glad I'm not the only one, every time I hear that part it really takes me out of the listening experience. Even if the meaning behind it makes sense, the delivery of it just kinda sucks...

Album Rating: 4.0

I returned to it again as I began to compile my final end of the year list and I'm still a little torn. When I'm listening to the songs there are quite a few really great moments, but I also don't know if I'm drawn back to the album as a whole.

There's some great moments here for sure but there's also a good amount of vocalist meandering / wankery

Album Rating: 4.0

So about meaning, when they did AMA after the album release on reddit some guy posted his analisys on the meaning, as copied below:



"The Charcoal Grace suite is about a man with a very conservative and religious father who goes off the deep end into anti-vacc and covid conspiricism. There's some sort of nebulous ideas that the father was unaccepting, perhaps because his son was queer or simply an Atheist. This all causes intense conflict between the father and his son, as well as his mother. In "A World Without" we get a mix of perspectives, largely from the father (though I interpret it as what the son is wishing the father was like): full of regret and convinced his own god will damn him to hell. In Vigil the father is dead or dying preventably of covid or some other harm of his own making, and the son is grappling with his rage at his father for his hypocrisy and all the harm he did. The son ultimately determines that it's best to just give in complexly to the justified anger. This is where the idea of "Charcoal Grace" comes in. The best theory I've got for this is that "silence in her charcoal grace" means that after every criticism has been spoken and the victim cannot muster a single extra word, that silence is a kind of forgiveness. Like wood turns to Charcoal in prolonged heat, sustained pain and anger will turn into a black and brittle silence, a "grace" in the sense that a person deserves to suffer more than they did. "Give me Hell" is this anger, as the son pours out his anger at his father, and recognises that that suffering exists as part of him, he could have been somebody if only his father's sins didn't live in his reflection.



I believe Mute is about Jim's experiences right after writing rise radiant, when the pandemic struck and he suddenly found himself both without a voice, and shockingly in a deep creative low where he had nothing to say. He reflects on how this has affected his mental state and connection with those around him, in this state who could save him? Who could love him? There's a bittersweet triumph at the end where he manages to limp through."





To which Jim responded:



"This is super accurate, woah! They nailed it. The only thing I'd really add is that in A World Without the father's "apology" is desperate and insincere. It's wild how much they got from this, that's amazing"