ALBUM REVIEW: Frightened – Voices

It’s very common to discuss the “difficult second album” when it comes to any given band. But with London’s VOICES, it’s more a case of “difficult third album”. Their second record, London, was easily one of the best progressive/extreme metal albums of 2014, with not a solitary dull moment on display throughout its entire length. It set the bar at an impressive, almost unattainable height for the band to surpass. However, when your band features some of the most talented and creative musicians in the UK scene, it’s safe to say that they are more than capable of getting over the hurdle that their last album has set for them. With Frightened, VOICES take the lean, impressive and incredibly progressive musical approach of London and push it to an all new level.

Unknown is an unnerving, eerie piece of music, with tight, dancing drum lines and disjointed guitar hooks providing a solid musical base to build the song on. With plenty of cleaner tones, jarring time changes and incredibly varied vocals, ranging from haunting, almost gothic clean passages, through to hellish howls and dense gutturals, this is an impressively eclectic, slow burning track that slowly gathers pace and intensity, taking the listener on an emotional roller-coaster, expertly setting a solid standard early on.

Rabbits Curse is, if anything much more progressive and experimental in its musicianship, with very precise, yet still chaotic, rhythm sections, sparsely utilised piano and acoustic guitar sections, and some more sonerous, monotonous vocal deliveries from Peter Benjamin acting as some of the key focal points on this particular song. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most experimental songs on the whole record, and, although undoubtedly excellent, it is initially hard to wrap your head around on the first listen. Evaporated takes a similar, dissonant approach, with a solid, discordant, rhythmic pace, peppered with unorthodox guitar leads and plenty of ethereal guitar tones providing lots of different elements that keep this track fresh and exciting. The album’s fourth track, IWSYA, takes on a much softer sound, and a far more conventional, accessible songwriting style than the three songs that opened the album. A bleakly atmospheric, acoustic affair, which makes great use of acoustic guitar hooks, pianos and clean vocals, and even the songs more substantial second half has a haunting grandiosity to it, which makes it immensely engrossing and powerful.

Dead Feelings takes the music back into more progressive and cacophonous territory, with gigantic, jarring guitars and David Gray‘s expertly intricate drumming giving this song some of its more captivating and memorable moments. Liberally imbued with tortured, emotive vocals and dense discordance, it’s another track that slowly gains momentum and becomes far more fierce and dark as the song progresses, even managing to incorporate some palpable ambient noise as the track reaches its climactic motif. Manipulator, a fairly short track, stands as one of the record’s stand out tracks, courtesy of robust leads and some of the best vocal arrangements on the album, with the lyrics sticking in the listener’s head immediately. The more measured and reserved drums and piano sections provide a great backdrop to the bulk of the song, and gel perfectly with the overall emotive tone that the music takes, dark and powerful.

Funeral Day is a dirge-like track that has some monolithic, cleaner moments, coupled with exemplary drumming and ominous, doom-laden vocals. It’s another piece of accessible music tinged with the dark progression VOICES are known for. It’s a short, sharp shock of what the band are best at delivering. Fascinator is a frenetic and eerie piece of music that acts as a bridge between the preceding track and the one that follows it, atmospheric in the extreme, and imbued with an impressive acoustic guitar motif.

Home Movies takes the music, once again, in a far more experimental direction, with jarring guitar lines, pattering drums and ghoulish vocals being the focal point of the song. As one of the album’s longer tracks, it manages to cram in a fair amount of sonic variation and top end musicianship. Every aspect of this track is exemplary, from the tight, rhythmic drumming, Dan Abela‘s dense bass lines and the bleak, macabre guitar passages. It manages to slide between harsher, more death metal orientated pieces and far more sublime, near-gothic instrumentation, with a fair amount of ambience thrown in for good measure.

Sequences, the climactic track on this record, is a really solid, mid-paced affair, with plenty of airy guitar hooks, eclectic drum work and epic vocals to make it one of the albums high points. Taking jarring yet moderately clean tones and adding them to the vocal delivery on this particular song, the band are able to craft a suitably monolithic track that brings the album to its climactic moments with aplomb. The album’s last track, Footsteps, is an equally bleak and ethereal offering, with plenty of thick, robust guitar, bass and drum sections thrown in amongst the softer passages to provide some of the album’s heavier moments before it comes to a close. This song does a great job of shifting between the darker aspects of VOICES‘ music and the much more relaxed elements that have helped create some of this album’s best moments. There are some brilliant, almost orchestral sections in here, that give this track an absolutely glorious sound, and contrasts perfectly with the more distorted rhythmic compositions. This brings the album to its final moments in an unexpectedly beautiful fashion, giving the listener an ending motif that does not belie the ferocity and intensity that has constituted the bulk of this records sound.

Frightened is a great record in its own right, and an excellent follow up to London. As far as musicianship, composition and musical variety goes, it does a great job of outdoing its predecessor. VOICES are, without question, at their creative peak, fully embracing their more demented, progressive side, and the music is all the more ferocious and powerful as a result of the exploring this side of their sound in greater depth. It’s a masterful piece of music that dances along the line between extreme, melancholic and downright innovative, without its more unorthodox moments feeling forced or unnecessary. This is an album that could see the band reach a much wider audience, and take their sound in a far more progressive direction in the future.

Rating: 8/10

Frightened is out now via Candlelight Records/Spinefarm Records.

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