Review Summary: A solid atmospheric, djenty debut album from a small band in Minnesota.
At one point it seemed that instrumental djent was essentially the next big trend in progressive metal. It was pretty much everywhere: solo artists like Plini and Intervals have gained lots of popularity amongst post-rock and prog metal fans. Even the bigger bands more associated with traditional progressive metal like Haken and Caligula’s Horse are also using the riff and tempo styles that have been popularized by this “djent” movement. However, I often wonder if it is more so a movement exclusive to the 2010s era, or if this is something that is merely just beginning. I suppose that’s something that only time will tell. Nonetheless, Giant’s Knife is a new member of this wave of post-rock influenced, palm-muted riffing, area of instrumental metal.
I’d consider myself a fan of this area of metal, I love myself a good progressive instrumental metal album. However, it is pertinent for me to recollect where these albums succeed and where they fail. Because of the lack of vocals, it becomes more difficult for many listeners to become hooked on a melody or stay invested in musical build-ups. This creates a greater responsibility on the songwriters to craft memorable melodies, impress us with their technical musicianship, build an immersive atmosphere, write long songs that build up tension for gratifying payoffs, and deliver to us an overall unified piece of music. Do Giant’s Knife check these boxes successfully? Well, yes and no.
First, I’d like to talk about what was done well on Oracle. As opposed to most of the bands of this area which are too jazzy, too post-rock, or not quite metal enough to make it onto Metal-Archives, Giant’s Knife is there. I was surprised to see this album made it because they are typically fairly obtuse when it comes to banning albums that they perceive to be djent. This means that this album will be fulfilling to fans of the heavier and more “metal” side of djent instrumental music. To exemplify this point further, there are more influences that this band holds in their pocket than just the popular djent artists. A perceptive ear can hear some influence from Karnivool or Opeth in the opening of “Dream Canyon”.
And as much as this album is pretty heavy at times, much of the high points of the album rely on strong, soothing atmospheres to create a satisfying contrast. The easy part about critiquing Oracle in particular is that I can easily make out which songs succeeded, and which didn’t. Overall, tracks 2-6 are all fairly clever and well-written. These do not only represent a diverse set of atmospheric, creative, and compelling songs but that they’re all written so that they flow nicely into one another. The track “Shores”, made entirely of strings and piano, starts with a nice touch of ocean wave ASMR, into building string arrangements strangely reminiscent parts from “Skyrim Atmospheres”, then the song transitions into a piano verse. But that piano verse extends into the next track “To Exist” where a distorted riff picks up exactly where the piano melody left off. Additionally, the track “Oracle” with spoken word from the speech “Pale Blue Dot” by Carl Sagan is added for aesthetic and thought-provoking purposes. Maybe I’m biased because I love that speech, but I thought it was a nice change of pace. The light guitars succeeding it also transition the song fairly well into the high point of the album “Cloud City”.
This makes way for the two longest songs of the album which is where, in my opinion, Giant’s Knife begins to falter a bit. These two tracks are filled with technical musicianship and big djenty riffs like the tracks before, but are more segmented into many unrelated musical concepts, with frankly weaker melodies, which are merged together without much of any unifying themes. Because these two tracks make up nearly half of the album’s runtime it affects how enjoyable the album is to listen to from beginning to end. “Ganymede” has a lot of interesting guitar chords, and jam sessions, and finishes off with a big tremolo guitar section into a more colored ambiance, but the track does not feel like it built up to that ending very well. They feel like many smaller tangentially related tracks fused into one longer track. Placed at the end of the album, these can make Oracle tiring to finish.
Something I want to mention is that this album has a lot of parallels to another album I reviewed a while ago. For instance, this gripe about struggling to finish off this djent/post-rock instrumental album I also had about Absent Passages by Scaphoid. Both albums even have their respective shore-related atmospheric song. Oracle is a heavier album overall and more percussion-focused, but it has weaker melodies and does not build up to musical climaxes as well.
Looking through the band's Twitter, I found that they have been working on musical material as early as 2015, which is crazy to me. I think this album would have been several magnitudes more successful had it been released around that time when this style was newer and fresher. Now it feels a little behind the times. On the other hand, I can strongly appreciate the band holding off on releasing their album until they are sure the product that they have fits their vision. I’d rather wait 10 years for a masterpiece than get 2 mediocre releases a year by an artist I like.
Though this is a mixed bag, there is a lot of great content in Oracle which would be most appreciated by fans of instrumental djent/post artists like Cloudkicker and For Giants. I’d be interested to see where this band goes in the future there is clear potential here.
Attribution: https://theprogressivesubway.com/2021/07/27/review-giants-knife-oracle/
