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This is my solo track ‘Hologram Smash.’ All instrumentation written, recorded and produced by myself. Special thanks deserved to Rob ‘Notion’ Penny (http://soundcloud.com/rob-penny) for tech help and Hannah Davies (http://haannaahhdavies.tumblr.com/) for vocals. Please share, reblog and give me some feedback!
You can download it from Souncloud here: http://soundcloud.com/joshlamdin/hologram-smash
November 15th saw the debut album release from local Herefordian instrumentalists Talons. Hollow Realm is, in a nutshell, a 40 minute long soundtrack to the films Sleepy Hollow and Silence of the lambs, both on Scarface amounts of cocaine. The opening track ‘St. Mary Will be the Death of us All’ is a monstrous doorway in to the album; with all the force and crushing dynamic you could hope for, there is no doubt that Talon’s have certainly evolved on this record.
Compared to the older releases I’ve listened too, ‘I’m Not Happy Because I Can’t Do Hans Das,’ and, ‘The Pearl,’ you can definitley hear the heavier influences coming through on this record. At a guess I’d say there’s been some heavy influence from the likes of Pelican, Russian Circles, I’d even go so far as to say Deftones and Botch.
The album was produced by Tom Woodhead of !Forward, Russia! and what a fantastic job he did. Instrumentally the highlight of this album for me is Alex MacDougall’s drumming, which has never failed to impress me and has been brought out excellently. There’s some fantastic guitar tone on this record too, ‘In the Shadows of Our Stilted Home,’ features a straight up, no dicking about metal riff at 2 minutes and about 45 seconds which is really brought out with a disgustingly (good) heavy tone. I only hope they will be able to keep these sounds together when it comes to live performances, having seen them several times in the past, the tones have not always been the most forgiving.
Hollow Realm as a whole though is a very full- on listen, though being quite short at only 40 minutes, for the most part it’s an incredibly fast paced and edge your seat listen. Your chances to breath come in at the interlude tracks, ‘An Expected Future Event,’ and ‘Great Railroads.’ I strongly suggest you take advantage of them. The standout tracks for me personally would be ‘Impala’ and ‘Hollow Depth,’ the closer.
‘Impala’ is a little anomalie in the record, Talon’s sound, for the most part is pretty melancholy. To put it bluntly, it’s not the cheeriest album in the world, that’s just a fact. But ‘Impala’ swivels that around quite nicely, there’s some genius composition going on here, the track starts hauntingly and progresses to get faster and heavier until a crack in the clouds appears. And the ending section of the song is a great lift in the album which breaks up the timbre beautifully.
The closing track ‘Hollow Depth,’ at just over 10 minutes long is certainly the bands most ambitious song to date. There are more riffs in here than my brain has capacity for, time signiture changes, tempo jumps, the lot. The ‘noise’ section at 8:52 certainly put a smile on my face.
As a debut release, this is compositionally and instrumentally astounding, there’s some really clever stuff going on in here and definite evolution as a band from there earlier releases. My only critiscms of the record are: after listening to this about 5 or 6 times now, I do find myself wanting some experimentation between the instruments, with the exception of the interludes, and the last section of ‘Impala,’ it’s the same 2 guitar, 2 violin, 1 bass and a drummer set up for the whole album, I know it’s a picky of me, but I enjoy finding new instruments in an album on a second listen, even if it’s just a pair of maracas or a tambourine, I go nuts for that shit. And a last small complaint, some variation in guitar tone, I meant what I said before, the tones on the album are great. But between, clean, heavy and HEAVY, there’s not much variety in there, still very picky I know.
But overall, this is a fantastic debut release and it shows off the musicianship of every member of the band fantastically, paticuarly Oli Steels (guitar) and Alex MacDougall (drums). Which is just what you want from an instrumental record like this, I think it’s fair to say they’ve certainly moved out of the ‘Post- Math’ label branded to them and into Post- Metal territory with Hollow Realm. And if you are a keen fan of all things, progressive, heavy and no singing, this is a record you should add to your collection.
Circuit Sweet Media creeped in and filmed my band Aulos practicing for this year’s heap of awesome gigs. Check out the tracks ‘Wolfcastle’ and the new ‘Killing a Unicorn’ live in the video above.
Oli Montez - Guitar (http://soundguardians.tumblr.com/)
Josh Lamdin - Drums
Brand new Aulos track, ‘Great White Buffalo,’ live from our show at Worcester Arts Workshop.
Oliver Montez - Guitar
Myself - Drums
Watch, enjoy, buy our EP (please)
This is my solo track ‘Hologram Smash.’ All instrumentation written, recorded and produced by myself. Special thanks deserved to Rob ‘Notion’ Penny (http://soundcloud.com/rob-penny) for tech help and Hannah Davies (http://haannaahhdavies.tumblr.com/) for vocals. Please share, reblog and give me some feedback!
You can download it from Souncloud here: http://soundcloud.com/joshlamdin/hologram-smash
November 15th saw the debut album release from local Herefordian instrumentalists Talons. Hollow Realm is, in a nutshell, a 40 minute long soundtrack to the films Sleepy Hollow and Silence of the lambs, both on Scarface amounts of cocaine. The opening track ‘St. Mary Will be the Death of us All’ is a monstrous doorway in to the album; with all the force and crushing dynamic you could hope for, there is no doubt that Talon’s have certainly evolved on this record.
Compared to the older releases I’ve listened too, ‘I’m Not Happy Because I Can’t Do Hans Das,’ and, ‘The Pearl,’ you can definitley hear the heavier influences coming through on this record. At a guess I’d say there’s been some heavy influence from the likes of Pelican, Russian Circles, I’d even go so far as to say Deftones and Botch.
The album was produced by Tom Woodhead of !Forward, Russia! and what a fantastic job he did. Instrumentally the highlight of this album for me is Alex MacDougall’s drumming, which has never failed to impress me and has been brought out excellently. There’s some fantastic guitar tone on this record too, ‘In the Shadows of Our Stilted Home,’ features a straight up, no dicking about metal riff at 2 minutes and about 45 seconds which is really brought out with a disgustingly (good) heavy tone. I only hope they will be able to keep these sounds together when it comes to live performances, having seen them several times in the past, the tones have not always been the most forgiving.
Hollow Realm as a whole though is a very full- on listen, though being quite short at only 40 minutes, for the most part it’s an incredibly fast paced and edge your seat listen. Your chances to breath come in at the interlude tracks, ‘An Expected Future Event,’ and ‘Great Railroads.’ I strongly suggest you take advantage of them. The standout tracks for me personally would be ‘Impala’ and ‘Hollow Depth,’ the closer.
‘Impala’ is a little anomalie in the record, Talon’s sound, for the most part is pretty melancholy. To put it bluntly, it’s not the cheeriest album in the world, that’s just a fact. But ‘Impala’ swivels that around quite nicely, there’s some genius composition going on here, the track starts hauntingly and progresses to get faster and heavier until a crack in the clouds appears. And the ending section of the song is a great lift in the album which breaks up the timbre beautifully.
The closing track ‘Hollow Depth,’ at just over 10 minutes long is certainly the bands most ambitious song to date. There are more riffs in here than my brain has capacity for, time signiture changes, tempo jumps, the lot. The ‘noise’ section at 8:52 certainly put a smile on my face.
As a debut release, this is compositionally and instrumentally astounding, there’s some really clever stuff going on in here and definite evolution as a band from there earlier releases. My only critiscms of the record are: after listening to this about 5 or 6 times now, I do find myself wanting some experimentation between the instruments, with the exception of the interludes, and the last section of ‘Impala,’ it’s the same 2 guitar, 2 violin, 1 bass and a drummer set up for the whole album, I know it’s a picky of me, but I enjoy finding new instruments in an album on a second listen, even if it’s just a pair of maracas or a tambourine, I go nuts for that shit. And a last small complaint, some variation in guitar tone, I meant what I said before, the tones on the album are great. But between, clean, heavy and HEAVY, there’s not much variety in there, still very picky I know.
But overall, this is a fantastic debut release and it shows off the musicianship of every member of the band fantastically, paticuarly Oli Steels (guitar) and Alex MacDougall (drums). Which is just what you want from an instrumental record like this, I think it’s fair to say they’ve certainly moved out of the ‘Post- Math’ label branded to them and into Post- Metal territory with Hollow Realm. And if you are a keen fan of all things, progressive, heavy and no singing, this is a record you should add to your collection.
