I'll be honest, the first time I heard IA was at the Roihuvuori town festival... I'll even admit I wasn't actually at the festival, but rather on my balcony. Roihuvuori is pretty small. Point is, immediately when I heard their music, I had to make sure I'd remember their name for years to come because they just blew me away.
With this song, they continue what they've been doing: shamanic metal. It might sound like a gimmicky non-genre "subgenre" of folk metal, but you'd be dead wrong to make that assumption because this isn't folk metal. It might have some influences from folk music, at least thematically if not so much musically (although it does, especially in the intro), but at their heart IA's music has a shamanistic spirit that most folk metal bands could never even dream of... so, they're better folk metal than actual folk metal bands.
Now, the question has to be asked: are they actually bringing anything new to the table? It'd be ignorant to claim that IA has reinvented the wheel, but what they've done is build on the existing wheel of progressive metal in a way that's their own while also remaining firmly grounded within the genre's expectations. Yet, it would feel somehow wrong to compare them to other bands. I mean, I could make the usual comparisons, but what's the point when IA could well stand on their own alongside those bands?
As for this single itself, it's extremely solid. It doesn't have any particular highlights, or rather it has so many highlights that none of them really shine through. There's one interesting psychedelic little bit in the middle that's extremely memorable, but I'd hardly call it the highlight of the song; I'd say the entire song is its own highlight and structured perfectly in such a way that it flows effortlessly, almost like a river, and looping it over and over again only makes it even better with each listen. That's rare enough to be remarkable!
However, with this comes the problem: even on first listen it became clear that in its entirety, this is not a very memorable song. There are riffs that are probably going to pop up in my head from time to time, but I'm not sure I'll remember that they're from this song. Not that I'd remember where half of the riffs I randomly remember are from, but that's beside the point.
The vocals are epic, at times achieving a vibe almost like ancient invocations. The guitars, bass and drums are all top-notch as well. Really, the only negative things I can say about this aren't even negative but rather it being less awesome than it could be if it was a different song; that is to say, this song considered purely by itself is damn near perfect and only when thought of in the context of progressive metal in general do its "flaws" become noticeable.
Enjoyability: 9/10
Relistenability: 9/10
Memorability: 6/10
Coherence: 8/10
Flow: 10/10
Originality: 7/10
Epicness: 8/10
Nutshell: IA churn on like a river, like a volcanic eruption, like a meteor, like a stampede of wild animals... they're unstoppable.
No comments:
Post a Comment