By Jonny Bakes
I spent a bit of time in Toronto last year and happened to be there just before the annual Canadian Music Week, which ended up with some chance meetings with a wide variety of musicians. What this really highlighted is that Toronto is a real focal point for music in Canada, so it comes as little surprise that there is a wealth of artists who hail from what could be called Canada’s equivalent of “music city”. Clearly this was a neat little segue into the subject of this review, the prog rock/metal duo Jupiter Hollow who hail from, you guessed it, Toronto!
Jupiter Hollow have been pushing their experimentation and variety for the last half a decade, during which time they’ve developed a continuous storyline that flows through their first two releases ‘Odyssey’ and ‘AHDOMN’ and continues into their latest outing ‘Bereavement’. A story of greed and power, struggles with mental instability and space travel are all set against a backdrop of a dystopian dying Earth and portrayed through some complex, and incredibly varied, musical pieces.
I really must stress the variety that you should expect when giving this album a spin as it’s, quite simply, an absolute rollercoaster. The only thing that is common between the tracks is the storyline, there’s very little that links the musical style together! At times it sounds like Coheed and Cambria (most likely down to the vocal style of Kenny Parry) and at others there’s odd little ballads. It feels like the album gradually builds up track by track with an increasing intensity that reaches a crescendo about part way through the seventh track heralding the start of the last chapter of this story.
The story is certainly the most important aspect of this album, and it’s a story of the way that power and greed can completely change someone to the point where their own values are changed. It focuses on a man who has the power to salvage humanity and save the Earth, but instead he finds that his power and its benefits are far more comfortable than the task of saving society so he allows it to collapse. Overwhelmed by the results of his inaction, he takes flight in his spaceship with the intent to pilot it into a planet and end his own existence. However, his plan fails and he finds himself awakening on a planet in another solar system and faces the realisation that this is the same planet that is the home of the satellite community that he sent there. A community that he abandoned and left to starve much like the inhabitants of Earth, it’s only a matter of time before he meets a poetic end.
Where do I even begin to discuss the music? I’d end up writing a small novel if I try to explain everything that’s going on here. You’ll just have to listen to it yourself to get the full experience, instead I’ll give you a little high-level taste of what you can expect here. There’s some vocal-driven ballads that feature complex acoustic guitar melodies as well as airy piano melodies, with the addition of a Gilmour/Waters influenced guitar solo, to start things off. But these fall away as the album progresses in favour of, what I would consider to be, more staple prog metal aspects that are reminiscent of the likes of Dream Theater. This section of the album has some fantastic bass rhythms to accompany fine examples of drum shuffles and syncopation, with the obligatory time signature changes of course.
So, overall, I’d say that this album is a grower not a shower. I’ll admit that the first couple of tracks left me reconsidering my album choice at first, but persevering through to be able to appreciate the album as a whole I could see that those tracks fit perfectly with the rest of the story. On second and third listens, I began to appreciate this even more and really started to get a handle on the story and movements within it. This is what I would call more of an “intellectual” album as it requires a fair amount of concentration to really appreciate what’s going on, and you certainly couldn’t listen to this on shuffle! So if that’s not your thing, then this isn’t going to be for you. For me, I could find myself picking this up again from time to time but it’ll be one of those things that I listen to in order to satisfy a very particular mood I think!
- ‘Bereavement’ is out now. You can get your copy, and other Jupiter Hollow goodies, HERE.
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