Review Summary: An album to drown in
There are certain albums that are so overwhelmingly accessible, powerful and catchy that the listener can absorb them completely in a single listen, for example
Thrice's Major/Minor and
Rush's Moving Pictures. This albums are continually rewarding and can be listened to again and again to great effect, but the listener can enjoy them for the first time just as much as the thrity seventh, in short, they are not growers.
Crack the Skye is not one of these albums, although it may appear to be to start with, since the choking atmosphere of mystery and the occult is very forward and makes advances on the listener before they have even started listening. Just look at the artwork. It has a trippy spiral and a mystical bear. I don't think that I have ever found anything more metal or musically enticing than a ****** mysical bear. I knew that I was going to give this a perfect rating as soon as I saw that artwork, before I knew who had made the album. Anyway, although the listener may think that they totally 'get' this album on first listen, they are wrong because the shroud of ethereal smoke and aether will gradually fall away with each listener, leaving
Crack the Skye more and more exposed, until she is completely naked. And trust me, she's pretty damn fine.
At this point in the review, it would probably be a good idea to actually comment on the music, which I would happily do if I had heard the album. However, since I knew as soon as I heard about it that this was an album that one could simply purchase, stare at and appreciate the vibe of, I have never felt the need to view it as a piece of music. If you don't agree with me, and have (heaven forbid) heard
Crack the Skye, then you are missing out and are too shallow to understand.
However, I can tell you what each track means, and that is far more important than what it sounds like.
Oblivion is not so much of a song as a gaseous expanse of deepness.
Divinations is the mind**** of the album and will blast you into the 7th dimension where you will be raped by tentacles of the future and tendrils conesmoke.
Quintessence perfectly conveys a waterfall of emotions, which consists mainly of trauma, but there's a lot of anger and there too. And pizza.
The Czar is a spiritual recreation of STASI prison camps and
Ghost of Karelia is basically Megadeth's
Lucretia with a battleaxe.
Crack the Skye is a towering laserbeam that tries oh-so-hard to hit the metal-as-**** mystical bear, but the bear is supreme, so it fails. Finally,
The Last Baron is a whirlwind that waxes and wanes, but mostly wanes, until it resembles more of an upside-down pine tree than a proper tornado.
Well,
Crack the Skye is deeper than your average ocean and more expansive than space itself. It is an album that will possess you before you can say "But there's a bear", and I have no idea what it's going to do to me when I listen to it
