Sydney six-piece We Lost the Sea first released their third full-length, Departure Songs (review here), this past summer. They financed it on their own and worked with Bird’s Robe Records and Art as Catharsis, and the latest version of the album was issued by Translation Loss this past Friday. It’s out now. It’s streaming on their Bandcamp page and has been for I don’t know how long. Why, then, would one bother to host the tracks for a full-album stream like it’s not something that everybody can just go find on their own? The simple answer is that the five-song, 67-minute outing is that much worth the time and focus.

Departure Songs, almost entirely instrumental save for a choral part in opener “A Gallant Gentleman” and samples in “Challenger Part 1 – Flight” and “Challenger Part 2 – A Swan Song,” is richly evocative, broad in its scope and gorgeously engrossing throughout its span. It has moments of rage, of excitement and times where its breadth seems to just go on and on, but its intent is plain: To convey loss. We Lost the Sea‘s work has always been thematic in one way or another — their 2010 debut, Crimea, took inspiration from poetry about the Crimean War, and 2012’s The Quietest Place on Earth resounded with melancholy at its center — but Departure Songs brings this to a new level of poignancy and specificity, each track referring directly to a tragic death that, as the band put it, “tells the stories of those who have gone above and beyond their duty as humans and sacrificed themselves for others for honorable reasons.”

The subject matter is no coincidence. In 2013, We Lost the Sea frontman Chris Torpy committed suicide, devastating the band and others around him, and as the group continues to move forward, it seems that in listening to the quiet reaches of centerpiece “The Last Dive of David Shaw” — Shaw an Australian diver who lost his life trying to recover the body of another diver — that the cathartic exploration on the part of the band is as much inward as it is outward. That’s as much the case for the soft airy guitars that begin “A Gallant Gentleman” — English explorer Laurence Oats who sacrificed himself so that the rest of his party could survive in the Antarctic — and for the subsequent “Bogatyri,” which takes its narrative from the story of three people (Valeri Bezpalov, Alexie Ananenko and Boris Baranov) who died opening the floodgates at Chernobyl to lessen the impact of the fallout, as it is for the two-part “Challenger,” which closes out in homage to the crew of the ill-fated 1986 shuttle of the same name.

It may well be that by telling these stories through music, the remaining members of We Lost the Sea — guitarists Mark Owen, Matt Harvey and Brendon Warner, bassist Kieran Elliott, pianist/keyboardist Mathew Kelly and drummer Nathaniel D’Ugo — are in some way attempting to make sense of their own, but it’s worth noting that in a subject territory in which everything and anything has been said and all that’s left is to rehash the superficial comforts of cliché, Departure Songs brims with original, personal boldness. Tracks are immersive and so gracefully textured that, even without the context retreaded above, it succeeds in putting the listener in a kind of contemplative, quiet place with its emotional gamut, the final wash of “Challenger Part 2 – A Swan Song” bringing a tear to the eye for what is the most universal truth of our condition. All of us. Everybody.

Like I said, the album is out now, so take this as a long-form version of “Recommended” if you want to, but either way, I urge you to dive into Departure Songs one way or another. Whether that happens here on the player below, their Bandcamp, Spotify, through Translation Loss, wherever, I hope you enjoy:

We Lost the Sea on Thee Facebooks

We Lost the Sea on Bandcamp

We Lost the Sea on Twitter

Translation Loss store

Translation Loss on Thee Facebooks

Sydney heavy post-rockers We Lost the Sea initially released their latest album, Departure Songs (review here), this summer, but it’s been picked up for a label-backed issue via Translation Loss next month, and if you heard it, there’s really no mystery as to why. Lush in its textures but still human-sounding in a this-might-be-able-to-be-replicated-on-stage kind of way, its atmospheric crux was as much emotional as sonic, and particularly for an instrumental band, its songs seemed to evoke precisely the kind of wistfulness that the band intended.

More about their intentions — including some of the direct themes they’re drawing from throughout — follows in the news about the Departure Songs release on Translation Loss. If you haven’t yet had the chance to take a listen to the tracks, they’re below courtesy of We Lost the Sea‘s Bandcamp. Well worth your time:

WE LOST THE SEA to Release New Album ‘Departure Songs’ November 27

Australian Post-Rock Pack Creates Cinematic Instrumental Atmospherics

Progressive instrumental heavy rock band WE LOST THE SEA will release its new LP, Departure Songs, on November 27 via Translation Loss Records. The Australian sextet, which calls its sound, “an unstoppable force meets an immovable object” and “crushing guitar noise with post-rock atmospherics”, recorded the album at Sydney’s 301 Studios (Coldplay, Chvrches, Muse) with producer Tim Carr. Departure Songs is the follow-up to WE LOST THE SEA’s 2012 release, The Quietest Place On Earth, a recording that was hailed as “a ride of despair, aggression and melancholy filled to the brim with emotion.”

A conceptual album with song titles and themes inspired by actual events, Departure Songs pairs heavy subject matter with the group’s depth-filled, melancholic, yet emotionally charged music. “A Gallant Gentleman” is a sound story about Laurence Oats, an English cavalry officer and explorer who, during an expedition to the Antarctic, willingly committed an act of self-sacrifice when aware that his ill health was compromising his companions’ chances of survival. “Challenger” pays homage to the Space Shuttle Challenger and its brave crew who perished on January 28, 1986. “Bogatyri” is a tribute to Valeri Bezpalov, Alexie Ananenko and Boris Baranov — aka “the suicide squad” — who gave their lives diving to the depths of the Ukraine’s Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in order to open its floodgates, saving much of Europe from deadly nuclear fallout. Finally, “The Last Dive of David Shaw” honors the Australian scuba diver, technical diver — one of only 11 people who have dived below a depth of 240 metres (800 ft) on self-contained underwater breathing apparatus — who gave his life in “Bushman’s Hole” (believed to be the sixth-deepest submerged freshwater cave (or sinkhole) in the world) while attempting to recover the body of Deon Dreyer, a South African diver who had died in the same spot ten years previously.

“‘Departure Songs’ is about failed journeys and it tells the stories of those who have gone above and beyond their duty as humans and sacrificed themselves for others for honorable reasons,” says the band. “It is also a tribute to our late friend and front man, Chris Torpy. It is about those that have left us and moved on. Each song on this album has a themed attached to it; almost like the song’s lyrics, telling a story. All of the stories are from history and about real people. Part of the band’s creative process was and is to find themes that fit the music and tell stories like that. Epic stories for epic songs. It helps give context, narrative and character.”

WE LOST THE SEA creates music that incorporates expression, pensive atmospherics melody, dynamics and crushing heaviness that, while seeming and sounding to be downbeat and somber, is also at once appreciative, commemorative, remembering and celebratory. A cathartic experience of sadness and perseverance encapsulated in five amazing instrumental passages, Departure Songs will come housed in a four panel heavyweight wallet with a 12 page booklet CD. The album will also be released on LP (packaged as a 2xLP gatefold), available in both black and limited colored vinyl, with accompanying 12 page / 12″ booklet.

Track listing:
1.) A Gallant Gentleman
2.) Bogatyri
3.) The Last Dive of David Shaw
4.) Challenger part 1: Flight
5.) Challenger part 2: A Swan Song

Departure Songs is available to pre-order now at this location.

WE LOST THE SEA features Mark Owen (guitar), Matt Harvey (guitar), Brendon Warner (guitar), Kieran Elliott (bass), Matthew Kelly (piano, keyboards) and Nathaniel D’Ugo (drums).

http://translationlossrecords.bigcartel.com/
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http://www.welostthesea.com/

We Lost the Sea, Departure Songs (2015)

According to that great purveyor of all interwebular knowledge whose name I don’t even need to mention because you all know it, it’s at least 12 hours in a car to get from Gainesville, Georgia, to Chicago, Illinois. Taking into account that that’s the trip drummer Mike Duffy had to make every time he wanted to show up to band practice, it’s kind of understandable why it’s taken American Heritage six years to issue Sedentary, the follow up to their 2005 Translation Loss debut, Millenarian.

Not only that, but the then-three members of the band — Duffy and guitarists Scott Shellhammer and Adam Norden — also had to deal with the issue of a bassist. As in, they didn’t have one. Most bands would either hit up Craigslist or go without, but perhaps in an effort to contradict the album’s title, American Heritage decided to call upon a host of players, from Bill Kelliher of Mastodon to Sanford Parker, who also recorded the bulk of the record.

So on top of their drummer’s hellacious commute, they wound up with the task of chasing down a bass player for each track on Sedentary, while also recruiting Erik Bocek to fill the role full-time. Oh, and Norden — who also handles vocals — completely reinvented the way he sings, moving from gruff hardcore growls to a semi-melodic cleaner approach, still rooted in shouting, but infinitely more decipherable than on the last album.

Come to think of it, maybe six years between releases isn’t that bad. I’d go on about the record, but you can read the review here if you’re so inclined. Better to get right to the Q&A with Norden, since there was a lot to talk about, including the lyrical thematics at play on the songs and the roots of the band’s choice of Sedentary as the album’s title, the sonic changes American Heritage has undergone in the last six years, the process of rounding up all those bassists and much more.

Complete Q&A is after the jump. Please enjoy.

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Let’s say you’re American Heritage. You hail either from Chicago or Gainesville, Georgia, depending on who in the band you are, and you put out an album that gets some pretty sizeable critical response in 2006 called Millenarian on Translation Loss. Two years go by and you decide it’s time to start putting together your next album – but wait, your bass player isn’t with you anymore. Sure there are plenty of bands who go without these days, and with two guitars, you would probably be heavy enough in any case, but some people just like to make things difficult, and apparently you’re that kind of person. Or band.

Instead of going without a low end, which is almost never the right move, or finding a permanent bassist in time to make their new album, Sedentary (also Translation Loss), American Heritage recruited a variety of players from the landscape of modern metal, including such luminaries as Bill Helliher of Mastodon, with whom American Heritage released a split way back when, Rafa Martinez of Black Cobra/Acid King and the ubiquitous Sanford Parker, who also recorded the basic tracks for the three remaining members of American Heritage – guitarist/vocalist Adam Norden, guitarist Scott Shellhammer and drummer Mike Duffy.

It’s a huge project, and with several other outside contributions as well – Lon Hackett who handles bass on opener “City of God” also plays keyboard, Kelliher also rips an added guitar solo on the grinding “Fetal Attraction,” Josh Rosenthal is lead vocalist for the wonderfully titled Martinez-bassed “Morbid Angle,” etc. – it’s a wonder American Heritage came out of it with anything close to a cohesive album. To their credit, and to the credit of Parker who mixed, they did. Norden’s vocals, which are cleaner on Sedentary than they were on Millenarian, are a tying factor, but even more than that, the changes Sedentary presents — there are plenty – are more related to toying with different genres than some kind of tonal inconsistency. Usually something with this many guests involved is either a wreck or a compilation. American Heritage have managed to pull an album out of what must have been a nightmarishly convoluted process, and before any measure is taken of how the thing actually sounds, they have to be commended for that.

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One listen to the conscious “War Pigs” reference that caps off “Controlled by Lunar Forces” on White Summer/Black Winter (Translation Loss) and it’s all too obvious that Philadelphia instrumentalists Serpent Throne know full-well what they’re doing. Their third album overall following last year’s The Battle of Old Crow, White Summer/Black Winter is not only a continuation of the four-piece’s fetish for vinyl-ready ‘70s-style LP artwork, but is also a tour de force of classic rock, dropping riff-led nods like the above-mentioned with ease while integrating them seamlessly into the sans-vocal Serpent Throne sound. The pace varies throughout, if not the approach, and though they never quite hit the same kind of unhinged bluesy playfulness as the first Cactus record or the same cowbell-ly vibe of some of their Mountain climbing earlier work – their strengths more evident here in the Iommi-driven “Riff Forest” – they pull off an individualized sound within a well-established aesthetic.

That’s thanks largely to the guitar work of Demian Fenton and Don Argott, who trade leads fluidly throughout White Summer/Black Winter without ever losing sight of the groove thanks to the stalwart efforts of rhythm section Colin Smith (bass) and Sean-Paul Fenton (drums). The percussive Fenton and Smith make a highlight out of a break on the six-minute “Pagan Eclipse,” showing some versatility from the straightforward rocking earlier into White Summer/Black Winter, as on opener “Headed for an Unmarked Grave” or the extended and stylized title track which immediately follows it. Acoustic guitar work blends well among the electric leads, which are prevalent enough so that I don’t find myself pining for vocals or feeling like they should be somewhere they aren’t. That’s a double-edged sword, though, because it makes a song like “March of the Druids” busier than it might need to be – at least until the cymbal-wash/percussion break that presumably represents when the titular march is taking place – but is also one of Serpent Throne’s greatest strengths. If those leads weren’t there, they’d be missed.

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Coincidentally, I was thinking about these guys the other day, in a “What ever happened to American Heritage?” sort of thing. Turns out they’ve got a new record dropping in the New Year. Needless to say, I’ve been wondering what ever happened to my millions and millions of dollars ever since this press release arrived. So far, no word on that.

Behold! Another album on which Sanford Parker has left his mark!

American Heritage will release Sedentary, their first album since 2006’s critically-acclaimed Millenarian, on March 1, 2011, via Translation Loss Records.

Recorded at Chicago’s Semaphore Studios with Buried at Sea‘s Sanford Parker once again behind the boards, the 11-track album features a different bass player on each song including contributions from the aforementioned Parker, Mastodon‘s Bill Kelliher and Black Cobra‘s Rafa Martinez. After recording Sedentary, American Heritage added Erik Bocek (Joan of Arc, Ghosts and Vodka) as their permanent bass player.

Adam Norden, singer and guitar player for American Heritage, explains the lyrical ideas behind Sedentary, “The idea is from the concept of a sedentary society, meaning, one that no longer is nomadic. I was thinking of what changed at that point in human development.”

Somewhere after the release of their first full-length, Time and Withering, I lost track of Dayton, Ohio‘s Mouth of the Architect. They put out a split with Kenoma, two more LPs and apparently now they have a new EP forthcoming, so I’ve got my work cut out for me catching up. A good place to start might be the 013 Popcentrum, where they’ll be launching their European tour at the Roadburn festival tomorrow. See you at the merch table, guys. I’ll be the one handing out Obelisk business cards.

The PR wire has the goods on the new EP and tour dates. Dig:

Ohio‘s metalgaze magicians Mouth of the Architect break the silence in their release schedule since 2008’s critically acclaimed full-length Quietly with a monstrous new EP, The Violence Beneath.

To be released on April 27th, the four tracks on this behemoth mini-release encompass over 32 minutes of patented Mouth of the Architect intensity. The band bring a slightly more metallic approach to some of the material, yet still bridge their cavernous buildups with beautiful, spiritual passages. The Violence Beneath is a multi-faced yet cohesive release, showcasing the band forging new paths artistically, and packs enough punch to tide us over until the next full-length.

Hear the opening/title track “The Violence Beneath” at Mouth of the Architect’s MySpace page.

The Violence Beneath track listing:
1. The Violence Beneath
2. Buried Hopes
3. Restore
4. In Your Eyes

Mouth of the Architect European tour:
4/15/2010 The 013 – Tilburg, Netherlands
4/16/2010 Trinitaires – Metz, France
4/17/2010 Glazart – Paris, France
4/18/2010 Le St. Ex – Bordeaux, France
4/19/2010 Rocksound – Barcelona, Spain
4/20/2010 Ritmos & Compas – Madrid, Spain
4/21/2010 The Musicbox – Lissabon, Portugal
4/22/2010 Porto-Rio – Porto, Portugal
4/23/2010 *TBA
4/24/2010 Secret Place – Montpellier, France
4/25/2010 Tunnel – Milano, Italy
4/26/2010 Farm – Bologna, Italy
4/27/2010 Channel Zero – Ljubljana, Ljubljana
4/28/2010 Feierwerk – Munchen, Germany
4/29/2010 Durer Kert – Budapest, Hungary
4/30/2010 007 – Prague, Czech Republic
5/01/2010 Tabacka Kulturfabric – Kosice, Slovenia
5/02/2010 Firlej / ODA Firlej – Wroclaw, Poland
5/03/2010 AJZ – Chemnitz, Germany
5/04/2010 Schlachthof – Wiesbaden, Germany
5/05/2010 Stumpf – Hanover, Germany
6/06/2010 Alter Stattbahnhof – Schweinfurt, Germany
5/07/2010 Cafe Nova – Essen, Germany
5/08/2010 Les 4 Ecluses – Dunkerque, France
5/09/2010 Corporation – Sheffield, England
5/10/2010 The Well – Leeds, England
5/11/2010 The Croft – Bristol, England
5/12/2010 Underworld – London, England
5/13/2010 *TBA – Marbehan, Belgium
5/27/2010 WZRD Radio – Chicago, IL
5/29/2010 Triple Rock Social Club – Minneapolis, MN
5/30/2010 The Cactus Club – Milwaukee, WI

There must have been something in the accompanying press release that turned me off Columbus, OH’s Struck by Lightning initially, though I can’t remember what. Somehow their Translation Loss debut, Serpents, wound up at the very bottom of my to-do pile and I’m only getting to it now. Though the artwork had me thinking Converge for some reason and wondering if they’d even be appropriate for this site, once I actually popped the disc in and gave it its fair shake, discovery trumped assumption and the four-piece proved to not only have some of that hardcore vibe, but also a good deal of the new-school gangly-note prog à la earlier Mastodon or, you know, everyone else who bit off them over the last decade.

I’m holding off putting Struck by Lightning in that category, however, mostly because the focus on Serpents is so much less on noodling and so much more on jagged-glass heavy abrasion. There are definitely forces at work from the metallic realms, as on “The Watchful Eye,” but the band avoids sounding too much like anyone in particular, and more importantly, is in no way a metalcore cliché. That’s paramount. This is not chugga-chugga breakdown metal, and since I’ve had to listen to it a couple times now for the purpose of this review, I’m increasingly glad about that.

Melody comes on some of the tracks but not all, and guitarist/vocalist Gregory Lahm seems comfortable in either situation. Lahm is formerly of Mouth of the Architect, but nearly all traces of that band’s post-metal style are gone from Struck by Lightning. The punkish “Supercell” sees to that, though the later, wonderfully-named droning interlude “Collection of Teeth” could just as easily fit in one genre as another. That it’s followed by the upbeat, high energy swinging punches of “False Hope” makes all the difference.

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