Review Summary: The cover looks very familiar...
Before I delve into this new debut release, I must confess I once tried out as this bands drummer on the sad site called ‘Melband’ we have over in Australia (named after our town, Melbourne), where musicians can post requests for a band, or reach out to potential musicians to fill the roles in their existing bands. While I gladly took the ‘your not the guy’ response, I did always keep them under my radar to see when the hell these fella’s would find the time to define what was ‘finished’ for their debut release.
And well, here it is…
May I start off with the production of this record!
While this album may fall into the typical prog-production category of super-clean, ‘not-one-mistake’ production, it doesn’t end up sounding particularly hollow as a result of it. Rather, the production is really well utilised, and there’s never too much ear candy at one present time to guide the listener through the main 6-8 minute tracks. The guitar tones are worthy of mention, well worth crediting for developing the sound Lucid Planet are clearly trying to establish here.
Opening the record is ‘Listen,’ an eight-minute track that thrives on it’s gradual unfurling composition. The bass creates a bed for what feels like an easy jam on the music, where the jungle beat drums slowly envelop to a crucendo, leading into a section much more purposefully composed by the band as a whole. It’s a worthy opener, but as the album progresses, there’s a sense the album keeps starting itself over. Just as songs end, just as you get the sense there’ll be a change of pace, there’s that slow tempo bass line setting the bed for the build of the track. And this happens again and again.
It feels as if all the songs here are just re-imaginings of each other. The intro sequences to most of these tracks feel like padding for what becomes akin to that ‘drop’ for the end of a song, which becomes the only moment that gives these songs their individual characteristics over the others. Kairos ends in this heavy math-rock riff that hits hard, and it is honestly really cool! Olm 053 also manages to find itself at its prime only in the last minute once you’ve made your way through its slow acoustic build and low key jam sequence.
There is attempts at breaking the pace of the album though.
This Side of the Yawning Grave (nice title), is a chant interlude track fit with backwards vocals and…well, monk chants that resemble ‘yawning.’ While I worried this interlude wouldn’t be made to good use to…you know…freshen the formula up at this point, the following song Beneath Me actually begins a lot more originally then its counter parts! The song for one manages to get heavy by the middle mark, expanding beyond with a heavy section featuring a thunderous solo, and just has more quality riffage!
And then Lucid Planet follow this up with Requiem to close the album, and…they really do hold the best punches for the finishing blow. Both ‘Beneath Me’ and ‘Requiem’ I feel represent the band at their best artistically. These songs just eb-and-flow in a more organic sense than the forced formula of the previous tracks. They’re also the two that close the album if you didn’t guess, and it leaves me in high hopes that Lucid Planet are capable of writing with a more colourful and diverse palette.
If it weren’t for the two primed closing tracks, I’d just condem this record for being plagued with ‘spiritualistic, mind-opening’ middle eastern scales and sounds which Lucid Planet clearly want to associate themselves with, and for lacklustre endeavours such as ‘Grey Feet’ with its camp fire instrumentation and monotone chanting vocals. There comes a strong sense of de-ha-vu, which I can attribute to the drum parts and the bass lines for the first half of the record. They’re just dead simple at times, and really aren’t worthy of mention.
Lucid Planet feels like a less exciting rendition of say, a Tool album. And I don’t think that’s an unfair comparison (the less you know - the better), as the vocalist similarly pulls off the strained shouting vocals that Maynard gives when he’s ‘passionate,’ (The Grudge) and the bass tone sounds straight out of Disposition/Reflection.
But Hey!
Maybe that’s what you want. Maybe you’re sick of waiting for the new Tool album, and you want something to hit a familiar spot to fill that void. Me? Well I grew out of Tool when I was 19 at the same time I was told that the name ‘Tool’ wasn’t a joke, and that I needed to ingest drugs to get in touch with our ‘inner beings.’
Did it turn me off? *** yeah! Progressive music has become something of a joke to me, somewhere to get the ‘feels’ that music is meant to give you, where you close your eyes and sway to the music like ghosts are possessing you. These days, it sounds just like masturbatory music to me, but listening to Lucid Planet did give me some enjoyment in the otherwise stale monster that has become of Progressive Hard Rock.
It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t try to be. If anything, they’ve well and truly established the sound they’re going for. My only problem is, if they continue to write songs to this already familiar formula, I worry for their artistic potential to deliver a great album, like Tool did with ‘Lateralus’ or ‘Aenema’. Other than that, you prog rock folk should lap this up!
