Post-rock and post-metal are, when at their very best, an elemental musical force capable of lifting the listener into a higher plane of consciousness. It is music as cinematic and breathtaking as it is emotionally devastating. The first time you hear Isis’ ‘Oceanic’ or Pelican’s ‘Australasia’, you’re transformed by the windswept soundscapes and pulverising heaviness on display, and it’s a feeling that only the very best of artists are capable of inducing. On their 2014 album ‘12 Areas’, Colchester’s very own sons of post-metal mastery Telepathy delivered a stunning debut that, while occasionally a little rough around the edges, certainly had plenty enough merit to at least place the band in the same conversations as luminaries like Isis and Pelican. The band are back in 2017 with ‘Tempest’, their long-time-coming sophomore album, and with just a single cautionary listen it’s clear that Telepathy are making their bid for legendary status, and without question have done everything to deserve it.
Opening with the delicate ‘Last Light’, there’s immediately a more measured and mature sound present compared to ‘12 Areas’, and one wouldn’t be punished for wondering if the band were content in stripping the ‘metal’ part of the equation out of their music entirely. And then ‘Smoke From Distant Fires’ arrives, bringing with it one of the most instantly mind and soul destroying riffs ever to have been wrung from a guitar. It doesn’t take long to figure out that Telepathy have spent the almost three years since their debut album polishing and refining every aspect of their sonic vocabulary, and where once their music was dense with staccato riffing and complex drum work, the band have learned to let their songs breathe. Rather than being simply bombarded with crushing, Cult Of Luna-esque dirges, tracks like ‘Celebration Of Decay’ envelop you, wrapping you within their deep folds and refusing to let go.
Telepathy have used ‘Tempest’ as a vessel for exploring new territory too, most viscerally in the track ‘Echo Of Souls’, which is the band’s first to prominently feature vocals. Though their enrapturing progressive metal is more than capable of standing up on its own without the need for a human voice, rather than override the instrumentation the harrowing screams here are folded elegantly into the mix, serving as an extra instrument as opposed to a ‘lead’ vocal. It works terrifically and opens the door for further such vocal dalliances down the road. There are also shades of black metal on ‘Apparition’, its opening a flurry of blast beats and mangled guitars that chill to the very bone before the fires are stoked once more and the song shifts into a glorious explosion of tectonic plate-shifting riffs. Without exception, the playing on ‘Tempest’ is absolute world class – precise and impeccably timed, but with plenty of feel and soul, never feeling robotic.
Penultimate track ‘Water Divides The Tide’ may be the most eclectic song on the entire record, somehow managing to shift from the band’s trademark sound to a Deafheaven-esque ‘blackgaze’ middle before falling in on itself into arguably the album’s most beautiful moment, a twinkling outro that would make Explosions In The Sky proud. Wrapping the album up is ‘Metanoia’, without question the most grandiose piece the band has ever constructed. The song ebbs and flows with delicate precision, making the transition from heavy to quiet and back again sound frighteningly easy. Dynamics are a vital ingredient in any post-metal band’s output, and Telepathy have an innate understanding that the heaviness has more impact if it isn’t constantly pedal to the floor.
It may sound like hyperbole, but ‘Tempest’ may be one of the greatest post-metal albums ever recorded. Though the band don’t currently share the same high profile as some of their transatlantic counterparts, their time is approaching at a frighteningly rapid clip. This is a mature, thoughtful and transcendent album that simultaneously manages to both define and defy the post-metal playbook. In years to come, people will be considering with wide-eyed wonder the first time they heard ‘Tempest’ and the way it shook their understanding of what modern heavy music could be.
JAMES LEE