By Rob Thompson
Amoral have recently their sixth album Fallen Leaves & Dead Sparrows which is the band's first release on UK label Graphite Records having previously been signed to Spinefarm.
After 2011's Beneath, which took the band everywhere from Europe to Japan, with debut shows in the USA and China, Amoral had a clear vision of what it wanted to do on this album.
"Very early on in the writing process, we noticed we were leaning towards lengthier, 'proggy-er' songs, in the vein of Beneath's title track. Those type of songs were the ones we enjoyed playing the most on the Beneath tour, and the ones where we felt the band was at its best. So it felt natural to try and focus on these aspects for the next album", says Ben Varon, guitarist and founding member of Amoral, who also acted as producer on Fallen Leaves & Dead Sparrows.
"Another defining guideline came to me a bit later, but made perfect sense with the material we were coming up with: this was to be a concept album. Not only were my lyrical ideas already intervening together, but the songs themselves were starting to paint a bigger picture."
In its simplest form, Fallen Leaves & Dead Sparrows is about that one big mistake that cannot be undone.
"People like the idea of second chances, but sometimes that's simply not an option. There are points of no return, decisions you can never undo. You can read into the lyrics as a tale of a drug addict, a relationship gone horribly wrong, longing for days past, fear of getting old... the latter two are probably the ones hitting closest to home for me", Varon says.
The album kicks off with a seven minute rather technical opener: ‘On the Other Side Part 1’, which has some metalcore overtones and a pleasing melodic guitar solo with soaring vocals. These merge together to make this the best song on the album. ‘No Familiar Faces’ follows and has a much more progressive mid-paced sound with plenty of tasty soloing. ‘Prolong a Stay’ sadly begins with riffing which would wouldn't sound out of place on Busted or McFly album then layers of orchestral keyboards add depth before technical progressive and death metal genres are introduced. ‘Blueprints’ is an acoustic number which could have been written by Opeth, albeit the vocals are somewhat higher.
‘If Not Here’ follows and this is the lengthiest tune on the whole album at over nine minutes long. After some acoustic guitars djent is added then the gruff bellowing starts leading into progressive style solos and a bit of death metal too. Yes, this track is all over the place and I think highlights the main problem with the album; there’s just too much happening for the average humanoid to cope with. The band really do need to pick a genre and work to become proficient in it as opposed to spanning several genres all in one song. Next up is an is an instrumental number: ‘The Storm Arrives’, which almost veers towards Iron Maiden territory while at times before becoming dark, progressive and djenty (is that even a real word?). Again, masses of things happening in this track; but probably too much. ‘See Through’ is a nice enough ballad which employs piano and uses slow, controlled guitars to complement Ari's singing prowess; there’s lots of emotion and melody present from start to finish. The final track, ‘On The Other Side Part 2’, is nothing like part 1 as its very similar to something Dream Theater would release and definitely epic in style.
So in summary, the fact that so many genres are present makes this a demanding album. To grow accustomed to the songs would take multiple plays simply because there are so many ideas demanding the listener’s attention. However, that said this isn’t a bad album at all: it’s packed full of creativity and talent, despite it wildly oscillating between multiple styles which could leave you bewildered and battered as to what approach they were trying to take. Hopefully in future releases the band picks a genre and settles on it as this would definitely help with creating music which is more accessible and therefore appealing and accessible to a much wider audience.
