Taking inspiration from ‘older' bands like Aerosmith or The Beatles can be a risky endeavor. While someone creative enough will be able to come up with his or her own distinctive sound while paying homage and gain credibility as a result; another artist might end up taking a bit too much from his/her influences and end up sounding like a copycat, which is only made worse by the fact that a large chunk of the artist's audiences are likely already listeners to the 'influences' mentioned earlier.
Thankfully, this achieves the former.
Mirroring is the debut album from Echo Tail, the UK based progressive-rock project of Mark Stebbing. Mirroring takes the “dirty” sound associated with grunge bands like Nirvana or Alice In Chains and fuses it with prog and ambient influences to create an atmospheric vibe over the course of this album.
Perhaps the best way to sum up the general sound of the album is to use the words of none other than the artist himself:
”This is an instrumental progressive rock album which tries to encapsulate a fantasy and dream-like atmospheric theme under some heavy driven riffs, and led with guitar solos and melodies.”
Echo Tail does exactly that from the get-go, with the opening title-track echoing and builds up to a blazing guitar solo in the vein of Led Zeppelin. Songs like Laguna on the other hand mix hard riffs with psychedelic vibes, keeping the atmosphere intact.
The true highlight of this album, however, is the 15 minute final track
"Aeronautical (I. Stargazer/II. Jetstreams/III. Aphelion/IV. Velocity City)", which starts off jazzy and slow, yet builds up to some truly epic riffs. The multilayered composition of Aeronautical is what makes it a standout other than the 15 minute (and unfortunately not longer) runtime.
In conclusion, Mirroring is a rough yet promising start for an artist who has a lot of potential to make something truly great. Let’s see what happens from here!
