By Monk
Gestated against the backdrop of the pandemic, In The Remains represents a meeting of the minds of two musicians – guitarist Mats Forslund and keyboardist Johan Chasseur – brought together with a love of the music from the era in which they grew up, both as people and musicians. the heady, hard-rocking Eighties yet determined to give it a new appreciation by making it sound fresh and vibrant rather than dated and staid, forcing listeners through a time tunnel that has them wondering exactly where this album is going to take them… the answer is a dark and mysterious journey of exploration and ultimately rewarding discovery.
Right from the opening crescendo of ‘I Am’ the duo prove that they have succeeded in their ambition. Built on a huge, crunching riff coupled with equally massive orchestration and a dense, lyrical vocal this wouldn’t sound out of place as the title track of a latter-day James Bond movie: broiling, sophisticated, enigmatic and intensely suspenseful.
This is a feeling that continues into ‘Shoot!’, with the Cornell-evoking vocals augmenting the cinematic feel of the instrumentation of the song, which pays homage much more to the building of the sonic atmospherics than it does placing a focus on the individual abilities or talents of the individuals involved, These are, of course, extremely obvious but the concentration herein is one creating an homogeneous sonic experience rather than platforms for individual extrapolation. Yes, there are moments of such exposition, but they blend into the overall balance of this eloquently realized opus.
Simultaneously, they have dragged that Eighties ethic they seek to evoke kicking and screaming through the Nineties and Noughties with aplomb and a sense of strident, unbridled, affectionate energy, in the process blending an epic conceptual thematic into an album that confounds and confuses as much as it energizes and, ultimately, rewards.
On my first listen, I was inevitably trying to draw memorial comparisons: the foremost one that came to mind was the first time I heard King’s X, or maybe even Dream Theater: bands who took the progressive rock sound and added their own fresh twists of paprika, saffron and turmeric to the mix. In an era when the term “progressive” has become abused, and often misinterpreted, ITR stand as a progressive voice which deserves to be heard.
- ‘Thorn Of Mind‘ is released today (Friday 19 April).
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