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Released on January 12, 2015 via InsideOut Music
Beardfish has been a rising star in the highly polarizing sky that is the prog scene for quite some time now. This is due to some great shows, opening for the likes of Pain of Salvation, Spock’s Beard and Flying Colors as well as their tendency to drop albums that are better than all of their previous efforts. It is my opinion that their new album lives up to that tradition by a larger margin than ever before.
+4626-COMFORTZONE is an ode to breaking free from living a mediocre life as well as to escaping the forces conditioning an individual to be defined by said mediocrity. This was apparently influenced by the negative vibe of Gävle, the Swedish hometown of Beardfish. The lyrics do not make up a continual story. Instead each track is a different story revolving around the album’s central theme. The stories deal with everything from the people being beat down and controlled by the desire to fit in on the song ‘King’ to an unbearably bored guitar player in a cover band who decides to play Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in the song ‘Ode To The Rock’n’Roller’ (which sports the depressing yet hilarious repeated line “They didn’t come to listen, they just came to drink, so play those three chords over and over so they don’t have to think”). Beardfish delivers these interconnected tales in a way that is equally personal and relatable. The songs that break from this mold are the three parts of ‘The One Inside’. These parts make up bookends as wells as a midpoint for the album, introspectively pondering the album’s theme.
The remarkable lyrics on this album are paired with equally remarkable music. It is a cohesive and colorful journey, vastly enjoyable to those not too turned off by the retro sounds of the seventies and eighties, which are definitely prevalent.The swirling riffs and melodies intertwine in a way that is both emotional and riveting. To me the instruments that stand out the most are the bass and the keyboards both overflowing with personality. This album is infused with defiant energy. At softer moments that energy is deceptively restrained, but is always released in such a way that one listening to this album might feel the urge to dance to rhythms that are almost exclusively not danceable.
Despite its retro sound, this album is representative of some of the best qualities of modern prog. It places its creators as one of the current guiding lights of the genre as they drop an album that will not be easily surpassed as the best prog album of the year despite it’s early arrival. In some ways, I am surprised to be writing this as the album didn’t really catch me the first time I gave it a spin. Obviously it grew on me immensely. As strange as this sounds +4626-COMFORTZONE is a prog album with subtle, tasteful, yet abundantly present swagger.
