 Call it metal, hardcore, sludge, doom, crust, noise, whatever…fact is that ‘Icarus, the Sunclimber’, Manatees' latest, is hard, heavy and epic. Despite all the types of music you usually think of when hearing the genres mentioned above, ‘Icarus’ contains more than anger, passion, grunge and noise; there’s room for dark ambient music and even the acoustic guitar appear on a regular basis on this album. The follow-up of ‘We are Going to Track Down and Kill Vintage Claytahh, the Beard Burning Bastard’ tells the story of Icarus, the kid who thought the sky wasn’t the limit, but found out the sun was. Taking of with the slow, subtle and sinister instrumental ‘Of Wax & Wings’, the album grips you by the head (or hits you in the ears) with ‘The Sunclimber’. A 15-minute during and cleverly built up epic, it starts with two minutes of experimental distortion before culminating in six minutes of vocal destroying grunge. Surprisingly followed by a simple, everlasting repeating acoustic melody with a little bit guitar distortion on the background. Strange as it sounds, it gives you an idea what it must be like when flying into space. It’s a classy version of the sounds people usually make up when imaging space, the sound of everlasting emptiness, the sound of the great unknown. The everlasting emptiness however cultivates in two classic heavy metal song, ‘Hyperion Altitude ’and ‘Untitled’. It’s here where things are going really, really heavy; the singer tries to scare the teeth out of his mouth, the guitarist goes completely crazy and the drummer clearly tried the weird looking candy he found by coincidence in grandpa’s and grandma’s bedroom when he visited them last summer. ‘False Sun’, on the other hand, sounds like a sequel of the ambient ‘Sunclimber’. It starts of slowly, again with a subtle used acoustic guitar and lots of distorted background noises before it gets company of guitar and drums. Was ‘The Sunclimber’ a recreation of flying into space in a positive way, ‘False Sun’ is a dark ambient trip which makes you feel travelling through time and space without a sense of direction, but with the feeling of nasty things coming your way. The album ends with the 12 minutes during metal riff based ‘Out in the Sky, Into the Gutter’. For the first time you can actually hear what the singer tries to grunge; ‘not where they belong’, either suggesting that mankind should stay on Earth or referring to Icarus’ melting wings moving towards his ass. The two chords riff continues throughout the song, with the band going completely crazy again for ten minutes and eventually ending in a two minutes during fade out. Manatees does what it feels like to do; getting an overload of energy out of their system and into a record, but without ending up as the cliché metal band. They have a feeling for creating atmospheric music and the idea of using the myth of Icarus is a very clever one; it is a perfect story to contain both walls of sounds and complete emptiness. For people looking for a little bit more adventurous and original sounds in metal music, Manatees ‘Icarus the Sunclimber’ is definitely recommended. MANATEES [NEW ALBUM OUT NOW] on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads
Last edited by Nat Morris : June 14, 2009 at 04:20 PM.
|
| | | | Overall Rating | | 7 | | Vocals / Lyrics | | 6 | | Musicianship | | 7 | | Production | | 7 | | Creativity | | 8 | | Lastability | | 7 | | Reviewers Tilt | | 7 |
70% | |
| |
| 
![Alesana--Icarus-[Rock]](http://hangout.altsounds.com/file.png)
Alesana--Icarus-[Rock]
| Altsounds Hosted MP3s 
Manatees – Icarus, The Sunclimber (Album)
