Review Summary: Lots of new ideas, increasingly talented musicians, not quite enough melody or album flow.
Chris Letchford and company are certainly growing with their sound, and become more talented musicians in the process. With each album that they create, their sound becomes more complex and experimentative. Their style here isn't so much "riff-tap-riff" as it was in the "Carving Desert Canyons" days. Naturally, a band that becomes comfortable with each other (even with new drummer J.C. Bryant) has the ability to harvest many more new ideas. V has STS trying a lot of new things, and admirably not remaining complacent.
"V" is a step in the direction of growth, but it feels too disjoint at times, almost like the band threw too many new ideas into one 60 minute space. There's a lot to like about this album, however. The intros to "The Winged Bull" and especially "Pontus Euxinus" are very tasteful, and feel like the beginnings to almost classic-Scale the Summit buildups. The problem is that, those intros don't really build into anything terrifically special. I've always really enjoyed the head banging side of Scale the Summit, where you can listen to songs like "The Olive Tree" layer upon itself into a glorious riff in the first two minutes, break itself back down, and transition well into the next song. Songs on V that promise to build, like "Stolas" or "Soria Moria", don't really do so as fluently.
With the slight shortcomings, it's hard to deem this a disappointment: there's plenty of growth in Letchford's playing, evident from his self-written jazz album. Mark Michell's bass comes through pretty clearly, and he's taken a step forward from The Migration (though that album suit him so darn well). Levrier and Bryant perform very well, and if STS manages to reign in their newfound chaotic sounds, they could reach even higher levels of success.
