I always bemoan the fact that Florida gets the shaft when it comes to tours, whether it's from US bands or groups from the rest of the world. So when Ne Obliviscaris announced they were coming to Florida, for not 1 but 2 shows, I was tickled pink (to say the least).
Anyone who has known me for more than 5 seconds is aware I have no interest in Butcher Babies or Cradle of Filth, but hey, you can't really expect a new band on their first US tour flying over from Australia to do a headline jaunt right off the bat.
Australia's Ne Obliviscaris have just released a video for the song "Painters Of The Tempest (Part II): Triptych Lux / Movement III: Curator", from their 2014 album Citadel. I'm glad they picked that song for a video. The intro to the song probably makes it my favorite on that album — the finger-tapped bass, the plucked violin string, the shimmer of the guitar, it all works. There are of course other things to like about the song, too.
As much as I acknowledge that Citadel by Ne Obliviscaris is a fine-fettered beast of an album, one which rightly appeared on a lot of end-of-year lists, my personal feelings towards it are a bit more muted than some.
Oh, the instrumentation is certainly as flawless and inventive as anything you might care to mention, and the compositions impressively complex and creative, but to me the whole somehow seems less than the sum of its parts.
For one thing it's clearly written to be almost self-consciously "progressive" in nature and this, combined with a few other things (the fact that there's only three proper "songs", the seeming disconnect between the clean vocals of Tim Charles and the rest of the material), means that it just doesn't work for me in the same way their debut did.
Here are a couple of items that were brought to my attention this morning. I thought you might want to know about them, too.
K: So would this be the first interview you have done where the name of the site is diametrically opposed to your position in the band?
T: I guess so! But despite the name of the site, you guys have always shown NeO great support over the years regardless, and so I'm very happy to be chatting with you today about our new album.
K: We are coming up on the release of that album, Citadel, on Nov 7. What would you say is different and/or what were you able to accomplish this time around as compared with Portal of I?
T: When we first started writing Citadel we didn't have any meetings to discuss the direction of the new songs. We simply just did what we've always done and write music until we were happy with the song. Personally we were very proud of Portal of I and we loved the songs, so when it was so well-received, that gave us a lot of confidence to forget about the outside world and just back our own judgement and have faith that as long as we love the new stuff then the public will enjoy it also.
We definitely noticed that there were some new sounds being explored, but honestly it wasn't really until the end when it was completely done that we realised it was actually quite a bit different. It's still very much NeO, but honestly I'm not sure we could create 2 albums the same if we tried! It's always been in our nature to explore and move forward musically, and to me Citadel just sounds like another step forward.
We have been eagerly awaiting the first sounds from Citadel, the forthcoming album by Australia's Ne Obliviscaris, and today we (and you) get the chance to hear them. Not long ago, Terrorizer premiered the album's first advance track, with the lengthy title of "Painters of the Tempest part II, movement III: 'Curator' Elusive Reverence".
Citadel will be released on Season of Mist on November 7 this year. You can pre-order the album here.
Not long ago we posted Part 2 of Ty Lowery's list of personal favorite album covers for 2014 to date. And then about 5 minutes later, I saw THIS ^^^^!!!
And wow, isn't that a fantastic cover?
We have very high hopes for the music on this album, too. It's set for release through Season of Mist on November 7 (November 11 in the U.S.).