Style: Post-metal, progressive metal, djent (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Cloudkicker, Scale the Summit, Pelican
Country: Utah, United States
Release date: 20 April 2025
A question for my fellow instrumental music lovers out there: how infuriating is it when someone dismisses a track just because it doesn’t have vocals? You know the type. “I need lyrics to connect to a song,” or “How am I supposed to know what it’s about with no singer?” My personal favorite: “It’s not a song without vocals.” Depending on which expert you ask, they might be technically correct1—but let’s be honest, we’re talking about the unwashed masses here, and what they’re really saying is “I don’t know how to engage with music unless someone spells it out for me.” Don’t you just want to smack them upside the head with something that really connects with you? The emotive melodies of Cloudkicker are that for me. Whack. How can you not feel this?
I came across Saranhedra thanks to my fellow reviewer Doug, who described it as “a fusion of post-metal with more melodic/traditional instrumental metal.” That alone piqued my interest, but then I noticed that Carian—the one-man project of Randy Cordner—is based out of Provo, Utah, where I went to college. Provo isn’t exactly a hotbed for my kind of music, so I was really rooting for this to be good. When I hit play and “Sunstone” began, I thought I was in for a bit of a slog. The slow, repetitive guitar line and eerie atmosphere—combined with the monolithic cover art—felt like it was setting up a vaguely doom metal funeral dirge. But then “Katalepsis” kicked in, and suddenly I was back in my college apartment, listening to Cloudkicker’s The Map Is Not the Territory for the first time. Saranhedra has a similar layered, melodic djent sound with punchy rhythm and emotional lift—except this time, it’s new. And it’s coming from Provo? Fucking Fetching wild. But is similarity to one of my favorite artists enough to come back time and again?
The heart of Saranhedra lies in its rhythmically engaging, melodious progressions. It belongs to that rare class of instrumental music where repetition isn’t a crutch—it’s a transformation. You might still be humming along to a similar motif by the end of a piece, but the aural landscape around it has been altered to varying degrees depending on the track, thus you’re rarely finishing in the same place that you started. Providing a heft of color to the soundscape is the lead guitar: soaring phrases (“Crissaegrim,” “Saranhedra”), happy tappy cadences (“Legion,” “Magog”), and even a bit of shred here and there (“Orphanim and a Flaming Sword”) all add a Scale the Summit vibe to this LP.
Unlike a lot of djent that gets stuck in a loop of polyrhythmic chugging and ambient filler, Carian writes songs. You feel each track is going somewhere and that the songs aren’t just texture and tone, but full-on compositions. Instrumental metal has a volume problem—not just in decibels, but in saturation. There’s so much of it, made with relative ease in a home office or basement, that standout work is increasingly difficult to find. Last month, I browsed the djent bazaar and picked up a random LP. Total dud. This time, I got lucky. Saranhedra isn’t reinventing anything, to be clear, but it brings melody, momentum, and a spirit that connects with me to a style that often forgets those things.
Speaking of volume problems, let’s talk about the drums on this release—I can’t fucking fetching hear them half the time. There are so many layers of beautiful guitar melodies that absolutely bury everything else, and the drums are what suffer most because of that. Which cymbal is being smacked right now? I repeatedly ask myself. It’s complete guesswork to my relatively fine-tuned ear for those things. While simultaneously, some lively, complex, and energetic fills are completely wasted under the guitar deluge. It’s frustrating because the percussive elements themselves feel like they have something to say, but the mix refuses to let them speak. This flaw doesn’t ruin the album, but spending more time getting the mix just right could have elevated Saranhedra from good to great.
Mixing and production issues aside, the heavy Cloudkicker influence on Saranhedra is a bit of a double-edged sword. On one hand, I can’t get enough of it. On the other, I can’t dole out high marks for moving the genre forward. But all the same, I can’t recommend this album enough, and if you’re an instru-metal fan, you owe it to yourself to give the stirring melodies of Saranhedra a shot, because—as you are well aware—a lack of vocals does not mean a lack of voice.
Recommended tracks: Crissaegrim, Orphanim and a Flaming Sword, Sardis, Magog
You may also like: The Arbitrary, Scaphoid, Hecla
Final verdict: 6.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram | Metal-Archives
Label: Independent release
Carian is:
– Randy Cordner (everything)
- Which, as we all know, is the best kind of correct. ↩︎
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