Review: Aeon Spoke “Above the Buried Cry” CD

Alright, here's the deal... I've been anxiously awaiting this CD's release for years, ever since I first heard the band, simply because former Cynic members Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert are the core of Aeon Spoke (on guitar/vocals and drums/keyboards/percussion respectively, of course). Cynic is my favorite band of all time and "Focus" is my favorite record in the history of mankind, so do the math. Of course, like most people, I was absolutely enraged and disgusted when I first heard Aeon Spoke, because this is totally chilled out "alternative" rock or whatever you want to call it. They've been tagged "modern" rock (whatever that means), AOR, progressive rock, etc., and they've been loosely compared to Coldplay and Porcupine Tree. I disagree with those comparisons, though musically some of this stuff is in line with those such aesthetics and therefore could be appreciated by overlapping audiences. But it requires immeasurably less technical proficiency than even the simplest Cynic riffs, and it's even more laidback and radio friendly than Portal was, and I actually really enjoyed their post-Cynic work in Portal. But enough of that. The bottomline is that, as music, this is good. I calmed down, and I like it. I've heard better, of course, and I don't listen to this kind of stuff often, but Masvidal and Reinert had a hand in recordings that changed my perspectives on music, so I'll try to support basically anything they do from here on out as a result of that. Luckily I'm pretty open to different styles of music so long as the songs are good, and aside from one or two cheesy moments ("Pablo at the Park" is just plain wimpy) this is a solid listen of lush layers of instrumentation and relatively solemn, chilled out atmospheres. It can be catchy, and it's very melodic and simple in song structure, but the overall vibe is still rather dark, with lots of droning reverb, soft singing, midpaced tempos, and intricacies in layering and textural details rather than exercises in literal physical playing dexterity. Even the more mildly "upbeat" tracks, such as "Suicide Boy", just as far as tempo and overall rhythm, have a somberness to them that really carries nicely. Opener "No Answers" is pretty straightforward in approach, not too catchy, not too dark, just right; "Grace" is one of the softest and most gradually paced pieces, quite a depressing track, really (in a good way); "Emmanuel" is another among the bleakest tracks, opening with acoustic guitars and vocals with some distant smatterings of percussion and melodic textures before increasing in volume a bit for one of the most moving choruses on the CD; while "Nothing" has been re-recorded and become much more ethereal than the original version I had heard, with excellent shifts in dynamics, a slow and droning pace, lots of hypnotic instrumental breaks, and a truly emotional chorus that's probably my favorite herein. And, if nothing else, the sound quality on this thing is fucking impeccable. It sounds like a million bucks, so for as long as it took to see the light of day, their time was well spent. Everything is thick and loud, with perfect clarity and excellent resonance - truly adding depth to all of the compositions, and really allowing the music to swirl around in headphones and such. I haven't got one single complaint there. I actually think the layout looks beautiful as well. All of the imagery is somewhat abstracted sans the band photo, with recognizable snippets of trees and textures resembling birds, but the color scheme and everything looks excellent and I love how the text is so compactly and cleanly arranged. Very nice. The lyrics aren't hitting me per se, there are some cool lines here and there, but everything is fairly simple and open, largely personal and so forth. This is definitely not something that all fans of the band's past work will appreciate it, but it is worth looking into to give it a chance. A few songs are less interesting or affecting, so there are some lulls, but there's a wealth of potential as well. In my book the darker it gets the better with this set of songs, and I'm not sure how far they'll venture down that road in the future, but I'm really enjoying the bulk of this material. I'll be curious to hear what they do down the road, though I imagine it'll be quite awhile...