October 10, 2016, 11:36 p.m.
The Chronicles of Israfel – A Trillion Lights, Tome II – 2016
This prog metal album is a great effort by a talented guitarist and composer Dominic Cifarelli. I have high hopes of the The Chronicles of Israfel. They draw heavily on the great prog and trash metal bands that have come before them.
Music publicist, Jon Asher, sent me A Trillion Lights just before I left the hotel for an endurance bus ride across the rainy northern island of Luzon, Philippines. The band was apprehensive to allow a free download, but I thank them. For anyone who has had to tolerate 12 hours of Filipino public radio crackling out of blown car speakers, you will understand. Win Radio? No, Loser Radio.
Album Review
I connected my Sennhieser earbuds to my iPod Shuffle and cranked to maximum ear-bleed level. I settled into my surprisingly comfortable bucket seat for the ride across much green rice fields. “Bring on the mixed meter, pedal tone riffs, and thinking man’s metal,” I said out loud to no one. But to my surprise, the album opened with an entirely acoustic composition. “Colors of the Energy” construct, with its 6/8 time feel, was not what I was expecting at all for the opening track.
However, I understood that not all storms start with a clap of thunder. Some start with a quiet breeze. Such as in Metallica’s sophomore album, Ride the Lightning, and how began in a similar way with Fight Fire With Fire. While enjoying the cool harmonies and well produced music, I eagerly anticipated the “boom.”
It’s like when you’re riding a roller coaster. You take in the sites as the car chugs to the apex of a giant curve, and your stomach knows that the huge, nut sack shrinking drop, is a mere seconds away.
Track 2: “Goddamned”
Track 2 on A Trillion Lights, “Goddamned,” delivered in a major way. It is a well crafted track that gives the listener a wild post modern thrash ride. Complete with seven string (or lower) guitars, some melodic vocals and a 2-Wycked guitar solo. I always listen to the instrumental music before I focus on the lyrics, but this track was different.
At first I thought I had been given a Christian metal album, cleverly disguised as seriously bad ass prog metal record.
“Oh fuck, how am I going to be able to listen to this record now and not be able to make South Park Jesus jokes?” I thought.
After more closely examining “Goddamned,” I realized it was not in fact a Christian blaze fest concealed with a few “fuck-bombs” interspersed through the chorus.
“Goddamned” also had the pseudo-sitar solo that broke up the track nicely. It was one of few moments on the album that incorporated “ethnic” instruments into the composition. I really enjoyed this and felt that these moments of eclectic instrumentation was underutilized on the album. On future albums of Chronicles of Israfel, hopefully they will explore this further.
The Middle
Looking deeper into the songwriting and arranging of A Trillion Lights is an interesting endeavor. They use virtuoso combinations of dynamics, acoustic instruments, keyboards, time signatures and density of layers to craft a rich and meaningful album. The one area I felt could have been explored more fearlessly was harmony. A bolder approach to using chromaticism or tonal modulation could have broken up the songs better.
There were times when I could almost hear the band starting to “stretch out” the chords and my ear was craving that off-the-wall, totally out of left field chord change. Very rarely did this happen, but the few times it did felt awesome. The simple chord change at the onset of “Spirit Carousel” (Track 5) was of these awesome moments.
A Trillion Lights has some epic prog thrash moments, for example. Truly head-bangable drum beats are delivered up with a no apologies, “Fuck you and your Dave Mathews Band” attitude double bass drum slaughter fest. Why can’t more bands be like The Chronicles of Israfel and embrace the metal? These guys don’t apologize what they and do and that is the ONLY way to play prog metal. Anything less is lukewarm, aka. boring.
There are many strong tracks and hidden pockets of musical craft on A Trillion Lights. The replay value is high and after three or more complete listening, I am still in a process of discovery. This was reminiscent of listening to Protest The Hero’s Scurilloius album. Each time I listen to A Trillion Lights, I hear something… a counter melody, a multiple part harmony or some other small twist that I did not hear any of the previous listening.
Track 7: “In Ruins”
Track 7, “In Ruins,” is one of my favorite track on the album. It has offered up not only a great musical offering in present times, but makes me very excited to hear what Chronicles of Isfarel follows up this album with. “In Ruins” comes of out the corner swinging fists of metal hard with a devastating guitar riff, interludes with an odd, nearly inorganic sounding instrumental break, and then suddenly shifts into a much quieter section to state the melody. The chorus is easily recognizable and lends itself to bobbing your head along with the compound meter.
The second verse amps up the intensity with heavier guitars and shows Ciferellis’ maturity in songwriting. Stretching out the second chorus, he builds intensity and segues in one of the best guitar solos on the album. Here Ciferelli explores some more modal shifts in his music and demonstrates his technical prowess on the instrument.
Again, as mentioned before, he incorporates some ethnic percussion right in the middle of the extended instrumental break and it sounds fucking awesome. Slowly adding layers and layers on top each other, he creates a monster wave of music.
It feels like you’re riding a giant ocean swell that not only has the power to connect you to a higher spiritual consciousness, but can also kill you if the 60 feet of water was to crush you. My only gripe is that the wave ride wasn’t longer. Once the instrumental break is complete, there is some rapid fire riffing to dissipate the energy of the track.
Look for great things to come from The Chronicles of Israfel.