Genres: progressive metal, djent (mostly clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: VOLA, Leprous, Agent Fresco
Country: Finland
Release date: 19 January 2024
Regardless of your love or hate for djent, modern prog metal is a fickle mistress. For me even the most tried and true bands like Caligula’s Horse only fire at their best every other release (which means that Charcoal Grace should be amazing (post-writing edit: it is better than Rise Radiant but not amazing)), and other bands like VOLA, TesseracT, and new Haken do relatively little for me aside from occasional flashes of oh, that’s cool. As a result, I’m an unlikely candidate to review External’s sophomore album, Dreamscapes, but when I sampled the album, I heard a lot of promise that they may wield djent’s chains to their benefit. I hope that I was right for my sake and for the band’s.
External’s most notable asset is Aleksi Haukkaluoma whose vocals (he also plays guitar along with Henri Kymäläinen) elevate the project beyond most bland prog metal by their virtue alone. He sings in a relaxed range with a pleasant timbre similar to Asger Mygind (VOLA), and his vocal quality when he sings in head voice is remarkably smooth and rich—see the start of “Last Fading Color.” Moreover, his harsh vocals—while a bit too metalcore for my taste—are a welcome surprise when they pop up as an extra layer in External’s sound. From gliding over the syncopated, proggy verses to a restrained belting on the huge choruses across Dreamscapes, Haukkaluoma impresses me. Much to my chagrin, though, his vocals are relatively buried in the mix, which utilizes a “wall-of-sound” technique. While I actually find the production to be shockingly tasteful overall, truly allowing for the huge djent-y parts to feel weighty, the band really needed to push up Haukkaluoma to the forefront a little more—he’s got too good of a voice to be so repressed.
As I alluded to, Dreamscapes uses its boisterous production to amplify its djent-y “breakdowns” and allow them to hit harder: regretfully, only some of the djent parts work. In some tracks like “To Weigh, To Wear,” “Serotonin,” and “Hypnagogia,” the djenting is performed with aplomb, providing a pleasant, polyrhythmic weight atop the slower parts’ Agent Fresco-level heaviness, but just like with the vocals, there are two sides to every coin. Several tracks—“Lucid,” “Fall with Me,” and “Ghost House” particularly—suffer noticeably from stereotypical modern prog pitfalls, mindlessly chugging along with pretty but unspectacular melodies superimposed over the top. “Lucid” is the worst culprit of all, starting as a lovely ballad with a beautiful solo bass, but exactly where you’d expect the track to break open, the band converts the nice lighter tempo song into predictable airy chugs. An unmuddied version of “Lucid” would have been a better track. Besides that, across Dreamscapes you’d be hard-pressed to find many moments that the well-seasoned prog metal fan couldn’t predict, and that’s how External fails. This isn’t an attack at their lack of progressive innovation like I often make at bands—I actually believe External are adding some really skilled and fitting musicians to the scene, easily as talented as their peers in VOLA or Agent Fresco—but I do feel disappointed at the general songwriting on Dreamscapes. They space out their most interesting, well-written tracks like tentpoles—first, fifth, and ninth—to hold the entire thing up, and in between those highlights where they show their new cards, not too much of interest happens (and almost nothing if we also take out the strange but unreasonably cool electronica interlude “Limbo”). External are still unsure of their identity on their sophomore album; they don’t know whether they want to be stylistically akin to VOLA or to be a more ambitious project. Half of the album feels like adequate scene worship, making the other (better) half feel out of place.
Those three standout tracks showcase an inspired band. Opener “To Weigh, To Wear” transitions between a flashy first riff with all the polyrhythmic drum flourishes your little prog-loving hearts could desire and then transitions into the best djentrified choruses on Dreamscapes. The final iteration of the chorus after the grand pause cements the song as a sure-to-be crowd favorite. Unlike the finely honed verse-chorus of the first track, closer “Hypnogogia” uses the full length of its twelve minutes to build anticipation with increasingly ominous djent riffs until an isolated piano solo replete with dissonance and silence. The huge djent outro works, super cathartic and reminding me of Leprous’ similarly epic modern prog metal closer “The Sky Is Red.” Ironically considering my taste for External’s vocal melodies, that middle tent pole is the most interesting track precisely because of how it utilizes its instrumental structure. “Sudden Waves” builds its themes around a single drone to start the track, morphing into arpeggiation and then further into a bright, expansive metal section. This track also features the piano of “Hypnagogia” in addition to more subtle orchestrations and even a smooth sax solo, which I thoroughly enjoyed despite how stereotypical the instrument’s become in prog metal since 2018 (thanks a lot, Rivers of Nihil).
Telling a band who writes bangers as good as “To Weigh, To Wear” to drop the verse-chorus schtick and stick to more evolving, crescendo-based songwriting feels odd, but I think External would benefit from stepping out of VOLA’s shadow into more expansive, thoughtful songwriting. I hope External internalize my criticism to write an album befitting of their talents as a band.
Recommended tracks: To Weigh, To Wear; Sudden Waves; Limbo; Hypnagogia
You may also like: Temic, Turbulence, Sam Mooradian, Ihlo
Final verdict: 6/10
Related links: Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: independent
External is:
– Samuel Järvinen (bass)
– Julius Lehtonen (drums)
– Henri Kymäläinen (guitars)
– Aleksi Haukkaluoma (guitar, vocals)
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