Review: Azure – Fym

Style: Progressive Rock, Power Metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Rush, Ayreon, (Luca Turilli’s) Rhapsody (of Fire), Haken, Yes
Review by: Dave
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 23 May 2024

On occasion, I mourn for the days of physical media, in particular the time before CDs when vinyl and cassette were the lingua franca of audio media. This is not because I am some cantankerous boomer who yearns for some fake ideal like “authentic listening experiences” or “the good old days,” but simply because I can’t stand long albums, and CDs’ eighty minute limits are too goddamn high in comparison to the relatively concise forty-five minute limit that most vinyl records impose. Very few albums justify this extended length, and when they do, it’s usually a sublime experience, but for every sublime cinematic hour-long folk-post-black metal experience (cough cough The Mantle) there are a hundred bloated duds whose potential is marred by a hesitation to edit. Enter Azure, a progressive/power metal outfit who well and beyond justified the sixty-three-minute length of sophomore release Of Brine and Angel’s Beaks, which eventually emerged as my top album of 2021. However, don’t let the short name of their latest release, Fym, fool you – this is a behemoth of an album that clocks in at seventy-eight minutes. Do Azure fill the space with more transcendent progressive/power metal wizardry, or have the brits finally begun to test my patience?

One facet that made Brine’s extensive runtime work is that Azure fully embody a “bag of tricks” approach to progressive metal, utilizing a base sound that sits somewhere between the sounds of Rush and Rhapsody and ambitiously exploring an array of tones, speeds, and levels of chaos: compare “Lustre: Siphon of Umbra”‘s slow and methodical buildup to the breakneck speed, drama, and intensity of “Ameotoko II: Cloudburst” to the absolute ball of chaos that is single “Spark Madrigal,” whose whiplash songwriting puts the (in)famous sporadicness of Between the Buried and Me to shame, and you start to get an idea of the scope of Azure‘s abilities. Sitting within the same realm of Brine’s sound, Fym utilizes similar instrumental pyrotechnics but employs new and unexpected instrumentation, such as “Sky Sailing / Beyond the Bloom / Wilt” introducing woodwind instruments including bassoon and clarinet, ominous church organs, and even steel drums. Azure maintain an overarching mood across Fym that subtly changes during its runtime, starting bright and bubbly in the beginning moments and ending with anticipation and intensity. Closing epic “Trench of Nalu” brings the album to a climax, utilizing a bevy of exciting passages that close the intricate story on a cliffhanger. Seriously—they basically wrote an entire D&D campaign for this album and I’m begging for the next chapter in this story.

A style like this could very easily devolve into a frustrating and disjointed experience akin to throwing kaleidoscopic mush at the wall, but Azure waste no time showcasing the tact of their songwriting, exploring in just the first quarter of Fym’s runtime optimistic and somber moods, upbeat and slow passages, progressive and restrained ideas, and intense and subdued moments, all coalesced into a cinematic experience through clever songwriting. Opener “The Azdinist // Den of Dawns” best demonstrates Azure’s songwriting prowess, in its opening moments establishing an air of optimism backdropped by bright synths and comfy jazz fusion grooves accented by energetic and chunky bass. Drums cement the track as the bass, guitar, and synthesizers slowly evolve around the opening ideas, allowing vocalist Christopher Sampson to modulate the mood along the way. Once the introductory ideas have been taken to their logical conclusion, the first verse is reintroduced before “Fym” turns it on its head with a steel drum fill leading into a quirky reversed-synthesizer breakdown, leaving room for a high-energy chorus to follow. Azure make it clear in the opening moments of Fym that a kitchen-sink approach can be executed tastefully and cohesively.

A critical yet heretofore unexplored facet of Azure’s sound is vocalist Christopher Sampson, one of the most attention-grabbing aspects of Fym. Their vocal style is, well, polarizing among Subway writers, to say the least (I see you, Andy and Zach), given their nasally delivery and sometimes shrill upper range, but Chris’s conviction and Geddy Lee-esque timbre tickle my brain spectacularly—I don’t mind if vocals are on occasion unpolished if the vocalist is clearly putting their all into it and enjoying themselves. On opener “The Azdinist // Den of Dawns” and closer “Moonrise,” the fun that Chris is having is palpable, and their energetic delivery coincides magnificently with the bright and colorful instrumentation; “Sky Sailing / Beyond the Bloom / Wilt” sees Chris hitting exceedingly high notes reminiscent of the ending of Rush’s “Cygnus X-1”; and in some instances Chris dips into their screaming prowess, demonstrated in the closing seconds of “Agentic State” and halfway through “Trench of Nalu.” Chris’s vocals and the instrumentation are both excellent on their own, but the magic of Azure’s sound lies in the synthesis of these two components.

As you can see, I have plenty to effuse regarding this album. However, we have to address the elephant in the room: does Fym justify its runtime? Unfortunately, the answer is: not entirely. There are very few moments on Fym where I’m not having an absolute blast, but I get three quarters of the way in and start to struggle to engage with the music—and there’s still a seventeen-minute epic left to digest! Fym introduces a couple of places for the listener to breathe, such as the quirky and bizarre “The Lavender Fox,” but its drama and strangeness mar its ability to palate-cleanse, betraying the fact that, while it worked magnificently in the beginning, this euphoric balls-to-the-wall approach is not balanced as elegantly with more subdued moments across the album’s entirety. Moreover, a few tracks in the middle could benefit from a touch of editing: “Weight of the Blade”’s midsection is a bit plodding but showcases one of the most chaotic moments by the end, featuring head-spinning bass work and lightning-fast instrumentation that makes me feel like a six-year-old who just downed an entire energy drink, and while this payoff is undoubtedly satisfying, I wish it got there a little more gracefully. “Agentic State” is packed with excellent moments, including a vocal callback to “Ameotoko I: The Curse,” but it is one of the few instances where ideas feel somewhat disjointed without the context of the lyrics and don’t transition as seamlessly as earlier moments on the album.

The beginning stretch of Fym filled me with hubris, making me believe that I was going to be unequivocally won over by a seventy-eight-minute-long album, no questions asked. While I was indeed won over by Fym as a whole, from its subtle change in mood across its story to the undeniable joy and elation to be found in Azure’s power/prog sensibilities, the extended length shows some blemishing which is nearly inevitable on a record of this size and scope. However, don’t let that scare you away: Fym is an excellent showcase in delicious power/prog excess, engaging storytelling, and cinematic songwriting.

Recommended tracks: The Azdinist // Den of Dawns, Fym, Mount Mettle and Key, Doppelganger
You may also like: Kyros, Others By No One, Poh Hock, Native Construct
Final verdict: 8/10

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Label: Independent release

Azure is:
– Chris Sampson (vocals, guitar)
– Galen Stapley (guitar)
– Alex Miles (bass)
– Shaz D (keyboards, piano)
– Andrew Scott (drums)