ALBUM REVIEW: Comedian – Without Waves
Comedian comes five years after WITHOUT WAVES‘ last record Lunar. While there’s obviously a flow through of musical ideas as the band maintain their progressive feel, there’s undoubtedly an experimental edge to this record. If you’re into a very affrontive, in your face kind of progressive sound, where there’s plenty of blast beats and a torrent of vocal styles, all mixed with a flurry of massive, screaming riffs, Comedian will itch that spot and then some.
The album opens with the frenetic Good Grief, which pulls industrial sounds in an ever so progressive way, only to slip into an electronic, swaying psychedelic place in its final third; you could liken this to PORCUPINE TREE mixed with DEVIN TOWNSEND. It’s a really modern sounding record, and very well pulled together. In fact, the entire first half of this record is massive; it’s so dense and jam packed with ideas you’ll be halfway through before you even know what’s hit you. Animal Kingdom and Set & Setting tonally maintain the full force assault, and yet WITHOUT WAVES have found a way to remove all formula from what each track becomes. All the tracks on this album start as one thing and change continuously until they’re unrecognizable at the end of their runtime.
.algorithm is probably one of the most interesting tracks because of its playful and yet utterly down-bearing assault on your sense of timing. It’s an inspired way to evaluate the anxieties around being online and the world we follow and make for ourselves there. A good portion of this record is lyrically dedicated to topics around being overwhelmed by the world, by certain aspects of life or the people in it.
Do What Scares You has an immense opening, something GOJIRA would be proud to put their name to no doubt, and some really unsettling ideas and a general sense of disquiet comes through. Like in many of the tracks, it’s a delight to submerge yourself in the sway of it. The majority of Sleight In Shadows is accessible to those who enjoy some good groove in a very MASTODON sort of way, but its solo is really lovely and stands out because there aren’t too many moments like it across the record. That seems to go with everything in the album; each track is interlinked but they all have their own colour and flavour.
While there’s not an obvious departure between one half of the record and the other, the sound overall in the last half takes its foot slightly off the pedal and brings it down occasionally to below 100 miles an hour. That is to say, while you might have enjoyed being utterly battered, the second half decides to mix up the assault in less obvious ways.
The change of pace in Day 15 has a real clash of serene movements and those lush harmonies of vocals. However, the intentional decision to make things sit just a little wrongly, like an unsettled mindset, is a really clever use of music conveying the story as much as the lyrics. There’s also an ambient undercurrent in Worlds Apart that makes it feel very spaced out. There’s something quite nice about having those gentler songs at the end of the record, even if they have their own tragedy to them.
Seven also has an amazing way of feeling really freeform and yet obviously a very technical track. It’s one thing to be able to build down from a technical place, but the whole song appears to begin very relaxed and gradually constrains into tight, melodic patterns.
WITHOUT WAVES have crafted a dense, expressive and expansive record in Comedian. The sense of Shakespearean comic tragedy throughout some very inspired progressive, musical ideas is a delight. Managing to interlink a sense of cohesion while making every song the star of the show is no easy thing, making Comedian a highlight record of this year so far.
Rating: 9/10
Comedian is set for release on March 18th via Prosthetic Records.
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