It’s been two years since Stockholm heavyweights New Keepers of the Water Towers released their sophomore full-length, The Calydonian Hunt, through MeteorCity, and that span of time has found them making a jump in more than just their label. Issued via Listenable Records, their third album, The Cosmic Child, finds New Keepers of the Water Towers a much more mature, more patient band, embarking on progressive psychedelic sprawl and incorporating acoustics alongside periods of the more expected weighted distortion. Tracks are by and large longer than either the second album (review here) or their Chronicles debut (review here), which compiled two self-released EPs into a 60-minute long-player rife with formative Mastodonic crush, and the three-turned-four-piece don’t shy away from including atmospheric interludes both within the songs and in the form of the closing title-track. All told, The Cosmic Child runs through six tracks in just under 47 minutes, and while there are times where it seems like New Keepers of the Water Towers have wandered beyond their capacity to restore structured order, there’s never actually a moment throughout where the songs get away from them, and the record winds up being as much of a success as it is a surprise, though those diametrically opposed to progressive indulgences will want to stay wary, as The Cosmic Child is full of them right from the beginning of opener “The Great Leveller,” which swirls to a march led by drummer Tor Sjödén and complemented by the guitars of Rasmus Booberg and Victor Berg (Björn Andersson has since joined on bass, but in this liner-noteless digital age, there’s no word on whether or not he’s actually playing on the album). “The Great Leveller” swells to a slow verse plod topped with melodic vocals and open, big-sounding guitar, gradually giving way to the chorus and a chugging rhythm playing out under a grandiose echoing, winding solo. The Mastodon feel isn’t completely gone from New Keepers’ sound – let’s not forget that they too “went prog” – but The Cosmic Child feels less outwardly concerned with showy technicality than it does with mood and atmosphere, “Visions of Death” setting a side-to-side sway in its guitar line that rests on a strong rhythmic foundation between the bassline and the drums.

There’s a current of excellent guitar leads throughout The Cosmic Child, and “Visions of Death” certainly has one in its midsection, but even these are never so over-the-top as to distract from the overall balance of the material, which rests between modern prog metal and heavy psychedelia. At nearly nine and a half minutes, “Visions of Death” presages much of what’s to come thematically from 12-plus-minute cuts like “Pyre for the Red Sage” (12:05) and “Lapse” (12:32), but each piece of the album has an identity of its own that simultaneously works to the benefit of the whole work. This is the best case scenario for a thematic, semi-narrative album, which The Cosmic Child purports to be (no lyric sheet with that download). Piano drives a transition between “Visions of Death” and the subsequent “Pyre for the Red Sage,” which opens with the same line and adds acoustic guitar for its introductory base. By the end of the first full minute, the song has unfolded its grandeur, but as big as it gets – it gets plenty big – there remains a grounding element in a catchy chorus and driving kick bass. Booberg, Berg and Sjödén all handle vocals reportedly, and on “Pyre for the Red Sage,” layers assure that as much largesse is carried across musically, it’s duly met with the singing. Before its halfway point, the track breaks to synth ambience and moves gradually, patiently, over its next couple minutes to post-Floydian prog metal, a thrashy riff running rhythm for a semi-shred solo that works because of the time spent getting to it. The guitar line that follows is one of the more memorable aspects of the song and indeed the album, and it’s met by far-off echoing vocals before a slowdown introduces the acoustics that will carry into “Cosmosis,” typified by a sweet vocal melody and rounding out with a darker electric guitar line that serves as a foreshadow to “Lapse,” the culmination of The Cosmic Child and New Keepers’ most ambitious single work to date.

The smoothness of transitions between one song and the next – their tactic of introducing a transitional element before one track has completely ended to set up the following – definitely indicates a drive on the band’s part to present The Cosmic Child as a whole piece rather than a collection of individual tracks, but “Lapse” stands out nonetheless. An extended cut with a direct, linear build, it charts an expansive course and winds up hypnotic almost to its detriment, since a close, conscious listen proves even more rewarding when it comes to the ethereal guitar interplay, Ancestors-esque sprawl and lushness of vocal melody. At 5:25, a bass stomp is brought into the mix as a figure of tension, and remains there for about the next minute and a half, until a return to a more serene, open feel proves welcome shift into a sustained, melancholic solo. I don’t know how many layers are at work in “Lapse” at this point, but my guess is more than a few. As the song necessitates, they end big, breaking at the nine-minute mark to a more intense guitar line, building up one layer at a time until all of a sudden bursting to live and driving the song to its final rush, Sjödén’s double-kick signaling the shift from lumber to run. Flourish isn’t the intent here, but they don’t completely let go of it either, guitar solos answering each other while keeping the richness of tone they’ve had all throughout The Cosmic Child, capping with hits and a final ring-out that moves with synth swell right into the acoustic epilogue title-track. As strong as the album has been vocally, they feel justified closing with an instrumental, since the latter half of “Lapse” was mostly vocal-less and the guitars and synth on “The Cosmic Child” do enough talking that nothing feels out of place or missing. The Cosmic Child ends on a note both familiar and pastoral, acoustics fading on the song’s sweet central figure before one final strum.

It’s a simple note to end on, but effective in showcasing the level of though New Keepers of the Water Towers have put into every element of the construction of The Cosmic Child. Nothing here sounds particularly forced – that might be the greatest victory of their progress to date – but there is a clear indication that neither is it an accident that two years later, New Keepers are able to accomplish something of this record’s scope. Maybe the unifying factor of their career will be their creative and sonic restlessness from album to album, or maybe they’ve found seven years on a sound in which they’ll want to reside and develop for a while, but either way, The Cosmic Child makes for a most welcome surprise and pays off the obvious force of will driving it. To anyone who’d maybe written off their earlier works as overly derivative, The Cosmic Child is a whole new New Keepers of the Water Towers.

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Listenable Records

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2013 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.