By BRIAN GIFFIN
FOR more than a decade now, Brisbane’s Caligula’s Horse have been carving a niche for themselves on the worldwide prog scene with a series of deeply layered, richly melodic and intelligent albums, each more lustrous than the one before. In the wake of In Contact, though, Rise Radiant came in a little flat, like a band that had perhaps plateaued in search of wider acceptance.
With the release of Charcoal Grace, however, the band redirects and refocuses to reveal their most stunning creation yet, and that niche they carved could soon become a swathe.
On this vast and breathtaking work, Caligula’s Horse have rediscovered their love of adventure and exploration, book-ending the album with tracks of staggering grandeur and encasing a phenomenal four-part Dream Theater-by-way-of-Rush epic within. Production-wise, Charcoal Grace is warm and dynamic, allowing every aspect to breathe organically for a richer and deeper audio experience than the rather subdued Rise Radiant.
“The World Breathes With Me” sets up the album’s musical themes, the dramatic tension between beauty and darkness, melancholy and rage that ebb and flow through each song. Sometimes one emotion becomes the heart of the track – the cloistered anger of “Golem” or “The Stormchaser”’s spiralling triumph – but C-horse’s strength has always been in working those varying moods together into a coherent whole.
So they do with meticulous precision on the album’s enormous centrepiece. Across 24 minutes, Caligula’s Horse construct a four-part masterpiece of struggle, turmoil and release exploring abusive relationships through the band’s expansive palette of down-tuned, djent-tinged riffs, elaborate polyrhythms, lush electronics and Jim Grey’s wonderfully crafted vocal harmonies. This is a total master class is progressive metal songwriting, each segment and section weaving and segueing seamlessly and naturally, without ever resorting to excessive technicality.
The tracks that follow wind through quiet reflective moments and explosive exhilaration, leading to Charcoal Grace’s grand finale, the multifarious “Muse” that builds from a cold, Opeth-like vocal open into a tumult of complexities and musical emotions to bring the album to a glorious close.
Caligula’s Horse have simply out done themselves here, the culmination of everything they have so far set out to achieve and perhaps more.
Buy Charcoal Grace on CD or vinyl
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