Artificial Language – Distant Glow EP
Artificial Language may not be a familiar name to many people, and until relatively recently the band were unknown to me. When they were added to the line-up of UK Tech-Fest in 2022 they were soon marked out as a band not to miss. Fortunately, I did not miss them, and they turned out to be one of the highlights of the festival. The band already have two albums under their belt, ‘The Observer’ in 2017 and ‘Now We Sleep’ in 2019. Now, after a five year gap the band are back with a five track EP entitled “Distant Glow.”
This six-piece from California play intricate technical progressive metal, spearheaded by guitar wizard Charlie Robbins. The new EP has a story running through it based on a dust bowl-like apocalyptic event. Due to coincidental events during his son’s birth, a father must make a choice. That is to believe whether his son is an innocent soul or a harbinger of annihilation. The hard-hitting opener ‘Two Faced Star’ begins this intriguing tale, with a complex, almost chaotic but precisely controlled structure.
The EP continues in much the same fashion with ‘Rain Follows.’ The constantly shifting tempos and darting little guitar licks filling the brief gaps make for an interesting 4 minutes. All five tracks are around that length and that works well because they fit so much into each song. Any longer could be challenging work for both band and listener I imagine, and something similar is coming up next anyway.
Charlie delivers a short deft solo to introduce ‘Stranded’ and a similar refrain can be heard later in the song. At which point the pace of the track slows a little. This allows Shay Lewis to show us a different aspect to his vocals with longer powerful notes.
The now familiar complexity is tempered by slower laid-back sections in ‘House of Hoarded Sands.’ Although a lot of the material is too complex to hum, it should be possible with the slower parts of this track. It is a carefully crafted and well-paced number, and one of my favourites on the EP.
The first single from the EP was ‘Skinwalker’ which is the dark conclusion to this story. It is written from the point of view of a cult leader who sees the previously mentioned son as their messiah. It veers from fierce heavy sections to catchy mellow ones which makes it a good choice for a single. This is also a strong track to finish on.
Some people will have had experience of Artificial Language when they toured the UK in 2022 including playing UK Tech-Fest. Despite that, this band deserves to be better known outside their own country. As good as this EP is, I hope it is a stopgap in lieu of another full album. That would be most welcome, and this is certainly a band to watch out for.
Track list:
- Two Faced Ster
- Rain Follows
- Stranded
- House of Hoarded Sands
- Skinwalker
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It’s solid, well, played. Great vocals. Enjoyable. I’m just starting to think this genre is growing similar to the homogenization that the hard rock scene of the late 80s felt. Contrary to popular belief, grunge did not kill the pop rock scene in the early 90s, it was the culmination of 15 prior years of the same-sounding style of music. People just craved a change and I think it’s starting to happen again. As much as I enjoy this genre of music, it’s all vanilla now. This sounds like the multitude of prog metal bands out there: BTBAM, DT, Haken, Caligula’s Horse, Soen, Intronaut, Leprous, Kingcrow, TOOL, Chon, Periphery, Sky Harbor, Distorted Harmony, Tessaract, Scale The Summit. Threshold, Vola, Teramaze, Anubis Gate… just about every band on the Inside Out label for the past 15 years… oh my gosh, I could list… literally 100 more of these bands that sound the same now. There needs to be a new evolution in the music, and we’re all just waiting, with baited breath, for the next movement within the prog rock and metal scene. Not sure what it’s going to be – inclusion of more world instruments, more man-made instruments like spoon harps or the bellowphone? Are we waiting for A.I. to tell us what it’s going to be? Tough to predict, but the djent infusion of the 2010’s is starting to curdle. Personally, I’ve been going back to the Space Age and exotica music scenes of the 50s and 60s and those sound fresh, exciting and more progressive to me now than anything on the current market. Modern metal employs technical, mechanical prowess on the instruments, but I’ll take the compositions and orchestration of Les Baxter, Enoch Light, Gary McFarland, Martin Denny, Dick Hyman (unfortunate, but true name), Nelson Riddle, Sauter-Finnegan, Si Zentner, Clyde Borly, or Russell Garcia right now.
Hmmm, I thought I’d post a nice comment of a job well done for the album – and it is, don’t get me wrong! – but, now I clearly see I have some musical frustrations that needed venting.
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