Review & Track Premiere: Cities of Mars, The Horologist
[Click play above to stream the lyric video for ‘Trenches of Bah-belon’ from Cities of Mars’ new album, The Horologist. Album is out April 5 on Ripple Music.]
What’s happening on Mars? Sci-fi pummelers Cities of Mars have been telling the story of a Russian cosmonaut on a covert mission and the discovery of ancient advanced technologies since the release of their first single, Cyclopean Ritual/The Third Eye (review here), in 2015. Through the next year’s Celestial Mistress EP (review here) — released by Suicide Records — and 2017’s Argonauta Records-released full-length debut, Temporal Rifts (review here), they’ve developed the characters and settings and woven a tale that’s increasingly complex in its substance and their sonic delivery of it alike. As to when they might just bite the bullet and put out a novelization of the story of KGB agent Nadia and the Martian conspiracy that has unfolded across the band’s work to-date, your guess is as good as mine — probably better, actually — but there can be little doubt that with The Horologist, the band’s second LP in their five years together (on Ripple Music), they’re moving forward in every conceivable fashion.
Plot and musical elements are recognizable in songs like “Trenches of Bah-belon” and the fuzz-largesse of “Hydrahead,” but the trio of bassist/vocalist Danne Palm, guitarist/vocalist Christoffer Norén and drummer/vocalist Johan Küchler, bring their songwriting to a new level and are neither afraid of pushing to new levels of tonal heft, as they do in opener and longest track (immediate points) “Necronograph” and the later “The Floating Museum,” or departing prior methodologies to serve the atmosphere of the album overall, as on “Work Song,” a Soviet-style acoustic folk song that brings in some thudding drums, bass and guitar late, but ultimately keeps to its central impression. Once again, Cities of Mars recorded with Esben Willems (also of Monolord) at Berserk Audio, and that continuity brings all the more into relief how much the three-piece has grown in their approach thanks to a forward drive in their songwriting and, no doubt, the not-inconsiderable amount of touring they’ve done in the last several years.
Offsetting quiet and loud parts from each other is something Cities of Mars have done since “Cyclopean Ritual,” and they’ve always done it well, but to listen to the manner in which “Necronograph” seems to let go of its heavier progression in its second half in favor of a stretch of quiet and echoing guitar, or to hear how the acoustic intro to “Inner Sanctum Outer Space” gradually builds over the first two and a half minutes of the song into the massive roll that kicks in from there on, they’ve never sounded so patient in that process or as willing to let their parts breathe and really settle in on the listener. They’re not repetitive necessarily — even the echoing post-rock break in “The Last Electric Dream” keeps a steady movement as it works its way back to full-brunt delivery — but the atmospheric effects of the band’s approach have never been so immersive as they are on The Horologist, and more, that’s very clearly part of the band’s intent.
Boasting three more tracks and an additional 11 minutes of runtime, The Horologist — at eight songs/46 minutes — is a significantly more substantial undertaking than was Temporal Rifts, and that mirrors what they’re doing with the creative growth of the band as well in becoming more complex overall in their sound and adding not just nuance to the raw weight of their tone and furthering the melodic aspects of their tradeoff shouts, but in composing material of greater height and depth and working to make the turns from one to the other more fluid. With “Necronograph” at the front, Cities of Mars showcase the immersion they’re hoping to achieve, but they push further, and the album actually opens not just with its longest cut, but it’s longest three, with “Trenches of Bah-belon” (6:58) and “Inner Sanctum Outer Space” (6:43) following in that order.
Very clearly, the band are working to to put their listener in a specific place within the story they’re telling, and they succeed in that with their loudest parts and the ambience through which those are contrasted. Whether it’s the minor-key tinge to the lead guitar ahead of the march in “Trenches of Bah-belon” or the noisy psychedelic fervor brought to bear in closer “Lines in the Dark” with all the more a sense of urgency because of its rhythmic tension, Cities of Mars have very simply made themselves a better band with a more developed approach.
That’s certainly worth appreciating and all the more so for the fact that they’ve done so by making their sound even more immediately identifiable — that is, one doesn’t hear the nod and crash that emerges on “Inner Sanctum Outer Space” or even the echoing vocals and acoustic guitar early in “Work Song” and imagine it’s another band — but it doesn’t say much for the actual listening experience. Fair enough. The Horologist — the title referring to one who builds watches or studies time — earns that additional runtime as compared to its predecessor through the noted uptick in complexity. It flows easily within and between its tracks, and when Cities of Mars want to, they are able to provide a sudden kick or a gentle comedown depending on the dictates of the piece at hand. The otherworldly intro to “The Last Electric Dream” is a triumph unto itself for the sheer grace with which the louder guitar enters at the 2:13 mark, let alone its molten groove or the balance between weight and atmosphere that ensues. Likewise, the subsequent “The Floating Museum” makes its intent to conquer plain from its stutter-start onward. And it’s no accident that the two are paired next to each other, either.
One might say the same of the album as a whole: it’s no accident. Cities of Mars started out with an understanding of what they wanted to do as a band, in terms obviously of the story they wanted to tell as well as the stylistic means they wanted to use. Fine. What The Horologist does for that is it brings into focus the increased reach of the band’s craft and the effectiveness with which they’re able to balance not just loud parts and quiet parts, but also concept and execution. The songs come first, which is exactly how it should be, whatever planets might be in the meantime. Their growth continues to be a pleasure to witness, and especially with some of what side B brings to bear in “Work Song,” “Lines in the Dark” and “The Last Electric Dream,” they still showcase remarkable forward potential. Wherever Nadia might end up, her journey has never yet come this far.
Tags: Cities of Mars, Cities of Mars The Horologist, Gothenburg, Ripple Music, Sweden, The Horologist
