One of the many I keep saying here is it is always a pleasure to get to know new bands with new sonancies that I would never expect in a daily basis. I have always avoided music with a horn section. I don’t why I just don’t like it. But when I heard this Sear Bliss with “Heavenly Down” I had a total and full change of mind. The grand and pompous sound it provides has everything to do with Black Metal. The contrast of the trumpets with the guitars and the harsh vocal is really something that has got me by my guts. Somehow it’s so unhuman. To some extent, “Heavenly Down” reminds me of the classic Pink Floyd’s “Atom Heart Mother,” one of the most controvertial albums of the band due to its unexpected sonancy. More precisely it takes me to “Atom Heart Mother Suite,” a song with more than twenty minutes full of trumpets with the same pomp and grandness. However, I’m quite sure this one wasn’t the album Sear Bliss had in mind when they recorded “Heavenly Down.” I’m pretty sure what they had in mind Bathory when they planned the sonancy of the album. Of course, the band added much of their own here. The album is complex with so many moments of grandness. It’s almost like of what would be a Black Metal opera.
“Heavenly Down” commences with the ethereal intro of “Infinite Grey,” the track that is an invitation card to the album showing everything Sear Bliss got. After the short ethereal oriented intro all hell breaks loose with a radical plot twisted in cadence and tempo. This radical plot twist is a trademark of the band. A thing that happens all around the album. The band explores a lot the ethereal mood to create an out-of-this-world atmosphere. And it does pay off. The sound of all the horn section creates an elaborate atmosphere giving the album its own signature. Following track “Watershed” is almost a Prog Rock track except for the vocals. Its delicate instrumental textures contrast with the grows vocalist András Nagy produces. It’s really what gives the track, and all tracks here, their very special taste. Some are slower as “Heavenly Down” and some are faster as “The Winding Path” with its uncanny and unearthly sound effects.
Maybe to some the use of the horn section would get kind of boring. The insistence on it, on the other hand, gave the album its own signature, a very difficult thing to find these days. It pays off to be out of the box most of the times.
Sear Bliss “Heavenly Down” was released on June 28th via Hammerheart Records.
Track Listing:
- Infinite Grey
- Watershed
- The Upper World
- Heavenly Down
- Forgotten Deities
- The Winding Path
- Chasm
- Feathers in Ashes
Watch “Heavenly Down” official lyric video here:
I’m just a lucky guy who has chosen metal to live with for a long time. Metal changed my life for good. It made me more confident and stronger. Metalheads are naturally far away from the mass mediocrity and don’t accept impostures from anybody else. Metal is more than music, it’s a life changing oportunity!
