After a crushing debut (2013’s Heart of Oak) and three years later the extremely powerful follow-up Voice of the Void, Canada’s Anciients had the world at its feet. Success had been reaped with two top notch albums and all that was left to do for the Vancouver gentlemen was to embrace the momentum and collect the rewards. The band quickly acquired quite a worldwide fan base, world tours were at their feet, even awards were won in their home country. Then it became eerily quiet around the band. Was the fast growing success too much for them?
Certainly not. Only where things were looking up in the last three years, this tailwind had now suddenly turned against them. First, band founder Kenny Cook faced health problems in his young family, which logically shifted his focus to more important matters for a while. And to make things even worse, the other founder and singer/guitarist Chris Dyck quit the band a year later, something that caused a gaping hole in the lineup. Add to that that quite renowned pandemic and before you know it, you’re not writing material for a new album until late 2021.
So that’s quite a reset for Anciients, but fans of progressive (sludge/death) metal are certainly delighted that they are active again. And when you listen to their new album, you can definitely hear a step sideways and forward compared to their first two albums, something that’s quite inevitable after everything that has happened and changed. Nevertheless, it still sounds very recognizable and the music is still in line with bands like Opeth and Mastodon, but where the band used to fall back on harsh, complicated sludgy riffs, they managed to create a much more open and epic sound on Beyond the Reach of the Sun. Cook’s dominating and catchy clean vocals are ear-pleasing and for the first time, they even made room for the use of synths. When album opener Forbidden Sanctuary lifts off, you can already feel the tension building in your body and when the song then erupts, all cards are right on the table: layered riffs, emotive vocals, and a progressively clever build-up to a fierce Opeth-ian finale with roaring grunts and a sudden fierce blastbeat. Now that’s an opening track!
The following song Despoiled is a succession of massive riffs, but even then the band manages to keep the song afloat and generate an emotion that keeps you at the edge of your seat constantly. Speaking of emotion: Is It Your God has very personal lyrics that talk about a former friend of Cook’s who died of cancer, but it’s mostly about grief and the questions it raises for religious parents.
There’s no presence of God
In this hell that we live
Descend into the lightless unknown
The song has a ballad-like start, but slowly builds to its melodic, proggy climax with even a Hammond organ. Goosebumps!
It may have been quiet around the band for eight years, but this magnificent comeback tastes like much more! Hopefully, they’ll have the wind back in their sails in the coming years and we’ll see them on a nearby stage soon.
Score:
89/100
Label:
Season of Mist, 2024
Tracklisting:
- Forbidden Sanctuary
- Despoiled
- Is It Your God
- Melt the Crown
- Cloak of the Vast and Black
- Celestial Tyrant
- Beyond Our Minds
- The Torch
- Candescence
- In the Absence of Wisdom
Line-up:
- Kenneth Paul Cook – Vocals, guitars
- Mike Hannay – Drums
- Brock MacInnes – Guitars
- Rory O’Brien – Bass guitar
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