ALBUM REVIEW: Echoes Of The Child’s Mind – Face The Day
Grief is an indescribable pain. It affects everyone differently. That hasn’t stopped artists from trying to unlock the enigma though. For centuries, grief has been written about in books, shown in art, or written in music. Prague band FACE THE DAY‘s third album, Echoes Of The Child’s Mind, joins the club. Whilst it isn’t strictly a concept record, there is a common theme of loss and grief throughout its eight songs. These feelings can be felt on a universal level, and the album offers another unique perspective on a complex emotion.
Get Out opens up the album. It’s eight minutes long, which is certainly an ambitious way to start a record. Obviously, the album is only eight songs long, so it has to fill up its runtime. The song itself starts properly at the two and a half minute mark after a long guitar solo introduction. It’s a gentle track and makes for easy listening. However, the issue with the song is that a lot of the runtime is eaten up by the instrumentals. Of course, the guitars, bass and drums do work well together, and it is nice to see Martin Schuster lend his talent to playing the guitar, and hear bassist Dominik Vozobule and drummer Roman Vicha. However, Schuster has such lovely and soft vocals that it feels a bit like a waste on this song.
Thankfully, the album picks up a bit from there. There’s A Place In My Mind Where I Tend To Hide is on the shorter side of songs. Even then, its almost six-minute runtime is taken up by an extended instrumental section. Unfortunately, most of the album plods along with the same instrument to vocal ratio. Of course, this does prove to be a bit of a unique twist. Not many bands have a focus on both instruments and vocals. They often just choose one or the other and get on with it. However, with FACE THE DAY, they obviously decided to have their cake and eat it.
That said though, it does prove to be a polarising issue. On the one hand, it is great that the band are doing their own thing and not having a care in the world. That is a very good quality to have. And the music is slow and gentle, so it is listenable and it captures one perspective of grief. However, the vocals are lacking somewhat; not because they are bad, but because they are not the main focus of the album.
Fortunately, the pacing is fairly even. Each song leads into each other nicely, and the songs are the right length. None of them drag on, even the longer ones. The band have been together since 2015, so they have been in the music industry for a long while now.
Overall, this album is like marmite; people will either love it or hate it. Whilst the pacing is great, and it is a unique album, it has an uneven focus on instruments over vocals. However, what we hear of the vocals are very impressive. The album is slow, and it is easy listening. However, it does lack direction sometimes. FACE THE DAY have created something of an enigma. But as grief is something that is different for everyone, isn’t it expected that an album that focuses on that subject is the exact same?
Rating: 6/10
Echoes Of The Child’s Mind is set for release on September 22nd via self-release.
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