ALBUM REVIEW: A Vast Field Of Silence – Outrun The Sunlight
The concept album: the ambitious idea of telling a story throughout a record. Over the years we have been treated to the likes of KING DIAMOND’s Abigail and MASTODON’s Blood Mountain; these are rich, cinematic tapestries that have been woven through music and lyrics to become some of the best albums in the metal landscape. So it’s always exciting to see a new concept album crop up on the release schedule, and it’s an even more tantalising prospect when you read that this is a concept album by an instrumental band.
A Vast Field Of Silence is the fourth album from Chicago instrumental prog-metallers OUTRUN THE SUNLIGHT. Over the past 10 years, this five-piece consisting of composers, professional accompanists and music instructors has visited realms as diverse as djent, post-rock and shoegaze; nothing has been beyond their considerable talent. Here they pull together all of their influences into a 10-track collection that shows great proficiency and innovation.
But how exactly do you make a concept album as an instrumental band? What OUTRUN THE SUNLIGHT has done here is build the entire record around a single melody. It’s a somewhat hazardous realm to step into and there’s an inherent risk that individual songs could sound too similar, but this is a concern masterfully navigated and instead we have here an album that shows just how malleable music can be. It’s a Do-Re-Mi story for the 21st Century.
Opening track Awareness first introduces us to the core melody of the album as a soaring earworm, underpinned by a djent-tinged groove that drives the song with intent. Building up to an all-encompassing conclusion, it’s an engrossing starter that has you hooked; the pitch shifts and an intoxicating two-note guitar loop adds urgency and intrigue for the rest of the offering.
For all of the subgenres this record touches upon, it never goes to a particularly heavy place, but there is a staggering emotional heft to Luminous Stillness. It is testament to the talent of the band that on the shortest track on the album, guitarists and founding members Austin Peters and Cody McCarty are able to deliver a stripped back, twinkling piece that tugs at the heartstrings without uttering a single word.
There’s something to be said as well for how an instrumental band names their songs, but peculiarly, throughout A Vast Field Of Silence many of the titles are actually quite apparent: Dreamless Chaos sounds like a theme tune for Mr Sandman’s darker side; Zero Dimension is a grand beast worthy of the rock-opera title; A Way With Honesty hides nothing and progresses like an honest conversation between alternating heavy chords and cleanly picked phrases. It’s an incredible feat that may be overshadowed by the music itself.
There are however some parts of the album that do not land quite as well. At times, the guitar-led focus begins to stray into schmaltzy, seductive territory that sounds like it’s plucked straight out of the 90s, particularly on Molten Light. At over eight minutes in length, it’s a cumbersome misstep for the band and one that shines a light on the issue alluded to earlier: in trying to make the melody differ enough from one track to the next, OUTRUN THE SUNLIGHT have wandered into domains perhaps best left unentered. Some of that saccharine instrumentation can be found too on the title track at the close of the album. At its best, it is a fitting tribute to the arguably lost art of guitar maestros like Carlos Santana or Yngwie Malmsteen whose core offering was their other-worldly talents across six strings, but at its worst it wanders clumsily close to sounding gauche.
Overall, A Vast Field Of Silence has its moments, and there are undeniable swathes of talent amongst this band. The audacity to repeat a single melody throughout a whole album and largely make it work via innovative, interesting and intricate ideas makes this a considerable success, although perhaps two or three songs too long.
Rating: 7/10
A Vast Field Of Silence is set for release on November 12th via self-release.
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