Review Summary: Echo Tail continues to build upon their sound, only improving upon itself in the process
Mark Stebbing's experimental rock project Echo Tail isn't even a year old and it’s released its third full length album. This is quite impressive considering how little time there actually was between releases and the styles utilized on each. Echo Tail’s first album, Mirroring , was an upbeat piece of post/sludge metal with heavy grunge influences that made a case for Stebbing’s guitar skills. It also showed ambient influences which brought an atmosphere to the music. With his second LP Sonic Slave, the atmosphere becomes the center of focus while the riffs are tuned back a little, letting the ambient backdrop and drum rhythms take the spotlight. With Echo Tail’s third LP Hold the Throne, however, we actually see a combination of the two previous releases with their sounds expanded upon even further, resulting in Echo Tail’s most interesting album thus far.
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Hold the Throne draws influence from its preceding albums. But, rather than relying on them for guidance, Echo Trail opt to fuse together a myriad of elements from outside genres. The first track for example, 'Tudor Rose' marks a return to the heavy sludge riffs of 'Mirroring' but at the same time combines it with the clearer production and focus on rhythm that existed in 'Sonic Slave'. If that wasn't enough, there is a much darker mood and great blues influence that puts the song into doom metal territory.
Hold the Throne proves to be a catalyst for Echo Trail's evolution; put simply, it's a fresh take on previous works, with additional influences and sounds around every corner. From the gong and tribal drums used in "Takamikura (Interlude I)" to the minimal house used in "Anglican Dreams", almost every song here is expanding Echo Tail's horizons in some way, with other new features including synthesizers, and even live drums. As a result, Hold the Throne is probably the Mark's best album yet, as the songs all have something interesting to being to the table yet flow wonderfully into one another at the same time. The production always feels professional yet never 'candy-coated', and never do Mark and his brother (who helps a bit with the drums and production) feel like they're experimenting just for the hell of it.
Put simply: Echo Tail is progressive rock in its most literal definition: rock music that continuously makes progress and explores new areas, no matter what the outcome might be. Echo Tail continue that tradition with their third LP 'Hold the Throne' which takes the sounds of their first two albums and stretches them to every extreme they can find, creating possibly their best full-length release yet.
