Kylesa’s last album, Static Tensions, caught me off guard. I really had only just heard of the band, not having heard any of their music. From what I had read though, they were being lumped in with the long-winded, though not necessarily in a bad way, melodic metal artists like Baroness and Converge, and comparisons to some of the prog-y black metal bands like Krallice or Nachtmystium were tagged on for good measure. And seeing as how I am a fan of all those bands, I was very interested in hearing the album. And that interest was rewarded by a loud, melodic beast of an album. And so it is with Kylesa’s new album, Spiral Shadow. While not immediately recognizable as black metal, at least not to me, Spiral Shadow bridges the gap between the melodic, even psych-tweaked, songs of Baroness and the mind-baffling lyrical diatribes of Nachtmystium. But Spiral Shadow is more than just the sum of metal band archetypes. To limit them to a singular musical label would be to diminish the creative impact of this music. There is a definite balance that is played out over these tracks, between the overtly pompous aspects that are inherent in metal and the purposeful restraint that marks the best moments in hard rock’s past.
Tracklisting:
01. Tired Climb (listen to the mp3 below)
02. Cheating Synergy
03. Drop Out
04. Crowded Road
05. Don't Look Back
06. Distance Closing In
07. To Forget
08. Forsaken
09. Spiral Shadow
10. Back And Forth
11. Dust
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