Style: Progressive Rock, Acoustic Rock, Post-Black metal (Clean vocals)
Review by: Christopher
Country: US-NJ
Release date: 22 July, 2022
Progressive metal can be an intense genre: frenzied guitar licks and benthic 8-string riffs discordantly negotiating some brain-bending polyrhythms; extended guitar and synth solos trading turns and duelling for five minutes and oh shit, there’s a sax too; concept albums about a space explorer searching the universe for a lost Tool album with a wise-cracking robot. When you just want to kick back, it can be difficult to find the right album in your prog library of madness. There’s a relatively narrow field of works designed for rest and relaxation.
Walk Between Worlds is the second album from Gates to the Morning, and its conceit is somewhat unusual. According to Sean Meyers, songwriter and composer, this record features acoustic reimaginings of songs from their previous album Return to Earth and as-of-yet unreleased songs from future releases as well as some originals for this album. Walk Between Worlds is the first record in a planned trilogy; “the calm before the storm” as Meyers puts it.
As a result, we should talk about Return to Earth a little. It’s a taut post-black metal debut that has a sweeter edge than one might expect from the genre. Where black metal is often existential and eldritch, Meyers’ take feels more personal, more optimistic. That sweet edge persists in Walk Between Worlds. If black metal’s general vibe is the cold desolation of eternal winter then Walk Between Worlds is the sound of that seemingly eternal grip being broken by the promise of spring.
The album opens with the eerie instrumental “King Obscure”, where pensive piano, acoustic guitar, and gentle percussion layer on the tension into a slow climax. This quality persists in a second instrumental, “Piscean Daydream”, before we come to “Moon in the Mid-Day Sky”, the first track with singing. It’s well worth the wait: a Porcupine Tree-esque rhythm plays under smooth Akerfeldtian cleans building to an extended solo that plays us to the end. “Paradigm Falls” starts out sombre and slow before kicking into fifth gear with rolling percussion and a chaotic jam-session solo before gently slowing to a stop. The album changes tone slightly as we reach “Chapel Perilous” which has a dreamlike, fairytale quality with instrumental breaks for the choral-style vocal harmonies, and a plucked harp that will stay with us for most of the rest of the album, lending a mysterious quality to the second half. Gates to the Morning’s post-black metal roots are most apparent on “Terra Incognita” which utilises a short instance of whispered harsh vocals. The album ends with “Fortress (Piscean Reprise)”, an instrumental waltz with flamenco-inspired guitar licks.
In spite of its billing as a collection of acoustic reimaginings of past and future tracks, a surprising sense of flow suffuses Walk Between Worlds; it feels like a planned journey where the instrumentals iron out the potential inconsistencies. Though stylistically a rather different beast, that ambient, flowing sensibility often put me in mind of Devin Townsend’s Casualties of Cool. Much of the album is instrumental, and even songs with vocals often feature a mere stanza of lyrics before getting back to playing. As a result, this is a very mood-driven work and although the instrumentals can be a little undiverse, they always prioritise and uphold that sense of mood.
You can’t do melancholic acoustic prog without invoking a little of Opeth’s classic Damnation, and there is a little of that pedigree in this record, but stylistically Walk Between Worlds owes more to Porcupine Tree and to the post-black metal of Eastern Europe. If Negură Bunget and Steven Wilson collaborated on an acoustic album you might end up with something like this. The post-black metal influence is a little harder to detect in an acoustic-led work, but it’s there in the empyrean ambiences, the persistent and ominous beat of the drums, the sense of something primordial lurking beneath it at all.
Sometimes you need a reminder that progressive metal need not be brutal and frenetic; a relatively narrow subset of the genre can be categorised as ‘chilled out prog to study and relax to’ and it’s always a pleasure to find a worthy addition to the canon. Walk Between Worlds is a charming little work which proves surprisingly immersive despite the fact that nothing it does is particularly radical or attention-grabbing. It has the quality of a winter visit to the coast: salty flecks of sea spray on your skin, the wind rifling through the marram grass, the turbid grey skies reflected in the roiling water… Not much is happening in such a scene but its felt qualities penetrate all the way to the bone; a moment of authentic peace, the world breathing beside you. Gates to the Morning have crafted a valuable, resonant, emotionally engaging album of acoustic numbers that manage to capture such a sublime moment. While it’s rounded out by some less interesting instrumental work, in its totality Walk Between Worlds is an album that is very much worth your attention.
Recommended tracks: Moon in the Mid-Day Sky, Terra Incognita, Return to Earth
Recommended for fans of: Porcupine Tree, Opeth’s Damnation, Iamthemorning
You may also like: Sisare, Axios, Karma Rassa
Final verdict: 7/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Independent
Gates to the Morning is:
– Sean Meyers (vocals, guitars, drums, keyboards)
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