Review Summary: Phantom Menace.
If I had to limit myself to a sound-off for this LP, I would have just written that your perception of “Immortal?” depends on how you feel about its penultimate track, “Moviedrome.” Not the deepest insight, of course the longest track on the album and second longest Arena ever written would matter a lot, but it’s something that I had to mention because of my own complicated relations with the song in question. Anyway, I’m supposed to talk about the whole album here, but let’s bookmark “Moviedrome.” We’ll come back to that song later.
What is useful to know about “Immortal?” overall? First of all, it’s a concept album, like both its predecessor and the album that followed. However, this time it’s more of an overarching theme of immortality rather than a storyline, although there is a plot connecting conspiracy theories, mysticism, and hi-tech. Anyway, the album’s structure has changed accordingly in comparison with “The Visitor.” Both “The Visitor” and “Contagion” are tapestry-like albums, consisting of mostly shorter songs woven together tightly to form a singular narrative. “Immortal?” though has a more traditional structure for a prog rock album: several shorter songs capped by an epic track almost reaching 20 minutes in length. Quite a lot of progressive rock and metal acts use the same structure routinely for their LPs these days, including the most famous ones.
By the way, I did not mention metal by accident. One other important thing to know is that “Immortal?” is noticeably darker and heavier than anything Arena released before and (arguably) since. Clive Nolan is a keyboard wizard first and foremost, but this time he lets the guitars to take over. Maybe that was the influence of John Mitchell who joined the band for their previous album to become Arena’s permanent guitarist for years to come. Or maybe Nolan just wanted to make sure that there’s still enough rock in his prog, which is something a lot of old and new prog bands tend to neglect. I wouldn’t say that Arena goes fully metal here, but the riffs are certainly in command this time around, although the keyboards still play an important part of course.
Already the first song features some punchy riffs expertly interspersed with calm but ominous parts and accentuated by quite interesting drumming patterns that appear to belong to an entirely different genre, something like trip-hop rather than progressive rock or metal. Drumming is particularly interesting on this album with the drums possessing slightly distorted and scratchy sound. The tradition of opening an album with a heavier song will persist for at least the two following albums, but at the time it was a new chapter for the band. The following two tracks also deserve a special mention, but they are great in a different way. “Waiting for the Flood” is one of the warmest ballads I’ve ever heard, if you only concentrate on the music and the tone of Rob Sowden’s voice. Truly a miniature sun with lush acoustic guitars and a stupidly great synth solo reminiscent of Ayreon. However, the lyrics provide a sharp contrast to that warmth as Sowden proclaims, “There's nothing you can do to stop the river flowing blood / The betting man has played his hand / He's waiting for the flood”.
Those sinister undertones stop being just undertones for the following song “The Butterfly Man” with its “ghost dance” guitar melodies and lyrics about a vile and cunning supernatural being. Clocking at eight minutes, this song serves as a true centerpiece of the album and reinforces its main motif: that feeling of hidden but persistent menace, a cold breath on your neck. Maybe the danger is not yet here, but it’s close, and you don’t even know what form it will take: some nondescript dude in a standard suit, the implacable forces of nature, or something more mystical and incomprehensible… Endless dying is a kind of immortality, isn’t it?
All these threads get connected in the album’s epic penultimate track. “Moviedrome,” yes, I promised we’ll talk about it eventually, even though I still can’t wrap my head around it. I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the reasons why I do these big discography review projects is for me to finally get to the bottom of some songs that escaped my attention previously or were hard to decipher without delving deeper into their core. It’s not that I disliked “Moviedrome” during previous (quite numerous) times when I listened to “Immortal?” in the past. It’s like I even failed to register the song. For years the album remained like this for me: three great songs, two just good ones,
one huge grey blind spot, and a passable ballad as the closer.
For a newcomer who is only getting familiar with Arena’s body of work, I would even suggest listening to “Moviedrome” separately before you get to the whole album. Just focus on that one single song and try to digest it bit by bit. For all my complicated relations with it, the song deserves some effort. It is second longest Arena song as of now, but also the riffiest and heaviest of all. Now that I’ve finally got the hang of it, it’s hard for me to even choose a favorite part. Maybe it’s the “look into his dead, dead eyes” section with some more ghost dance melodies and bulky guitars. Maybe it’s the soft piano part starting sometime after the eighth minute, although that one goes on a bit too long. Maybe it’s those cold synths and intricate guitar solos that bring the song back into sinister mood sometime around the fifteenth minute. “Moviedrome” has a lot going on and a lot to offer for an attentive listener. At the same time, for me it’s still more about handpicking the tastier parts than about the song as a whole. Arena didn’t do such long-form exercises before this album, so you expect that the band really has a lot to say. In short, you would expect an extraordinary song, but it’s mostly just good.
“Immortal?” is not as tightly knitted together as “The Visitor” or “Contagion,” but its strength still lies not so much in its individual songs as in that constant ominous, paranoid atmosphere and heavier, beefier sound. Only “Pepper’s Ghost” can compete with this album in terms of heaviness, but that album is much lighter in terms of mood. “Immortal?” is not my favorite album from the band because of some less interesting songwriting choices and cheap “it was all a dream” conclusion, but it certainly shows Arena at its darkest.
