Album Review; EscapeTheCult - All You Need To

Independent Release
Genre: Progressive Metal


Track Listing:

1. Backfired
2. Clandestine
3. I'm Absolute
4. Feel The Flight
5. Tired Of The Past
6. This Time Will Come
7. Where No Grown Up Grapes

While some other super groups end up sounding like an unimaginative, clumsy melding of different well-known bands, EscapeTheCult is an entity unto itself. The band is comprised of Primus/A Perfect Circle drummer Tim Alexander, King Diamond guitarist Mike Wead, vocalist Matthieu Romarin of Uneven Structure, and the band’s mastermind, Kamlath bass player Peter G. Shallmin. This cauldron of musical excellence combines to form one of the most multifaceted records you’ll hear in 2014.

‘All You Need To’ has a beautifully soulful quality to it that feels organic from note to note. Nothing on this album feels forced, and yet there’s so much delivered within the seven tracks. There are plenty of metal riffs and guitar solos, there are more ambient, almost new wave tinges, and a lot of jazz influence to be heard. This melting pot is nicely topped off with Romarin’s smooth yet powerful singing voice.

There’s a wide array of emotional connotation on show here; ‘Clandestine’ has an innocent joyfulness to it. Then there’s the more brooding and thoughtful ‘I’m Absolute’. ‘Feel The Flight’  is a brilliantly realised song; uplifting with hope and full of spirit, which can be as easily credited to the more subtle nuances of the music as to the sumptuous vocal melody. To say there’s a lot going on is an understatement, yet everything has enough breathing space, preventing the songs from getting bogged down.

All too often an album is professed to take the listener on a journey, but ‘All You Need To’ does exactly that, and it achieves this through the purest means. This is not a record that will try pretentiously to challenge your perceptions of what heavy music can be, instead this is four very achieved musicians coming together to create art, and like all accomplished artworks it will draw you in again and again. Here’s hoping that this is not a flash in the pan, as it would be great to see what else EscapeTheCult are capable of in the future.

Rating: 8/10

Links: https://www.facebook.com/EscapeTheCvlt?fref=ts
           https://escapethecult.bandcamp.com/releases