Mostly, he just sounds weird: his lyrics are like getting trapped at a party by a guy who wants to talk about dolphins, or Ralph Nader. Leitmotif, he's still in an awkward niche: he's too sincere and hopeful to sandpaper our eyes with visions of horror, yet too smooth to let his guard down. Painfully earnest and sounding more assured than on their previous record It's too diffuse to match its scope, and all of the influences melt down to a bland sheen.Īlthough frontman Gavin Hayes could have set the tone here, he's a hard man to read. I dox92t mean the lyrics or the central concept, which are enough of a Rorschach test to let any devoted fan dig out whatever they want from this album (post-millennial dread, musings on the conflict between the real and the unreal, the active and the paralyzed- all your favorite themes are here), but the hundred and one ideas thrown onto this record dox92t hang together. There's just one problem: El Cielo makes no sense. Veering between ominous dirges and wide-eyed big sky anthems, they play massive art metal that's been treated to multi-layered, intricate production in the vein of Radiohead and Pink Floyd and for a band that can smash and roil like waves against Pacific beaches, they frequently take the subtler road, softening themselves with atmosphere and world music flourishes. This California art metal band resembles Tool raised by hippies, encouraged to finger-paint all day. That's just the first puzzle in Dredg's latest full-length.
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