By Jason Walker
After a significant amount of time since their previous release, ‘Secondary Genesis’, Novena have returned with a brand new offering of ‘Eleventh Hour’ following an interesting social media campaign from many of its members with a mix of cryptic posts, changes to profile photos signalling new updates with each hour being struck on the clock. After being signed to the Frontiers Music label, a lot of buzz has been created all leading up to their album launch show in London alongside other prog darlings, Tiberius, Shattered Skies, Ihlo and Azure.
I’ve been following the campaign with bated breath since the album was announced and when this popped into the Über Rock album review roster, the editors were made very well aware that I wasn’t going to accept anyone else but myself grabbing this. Following three singles being released, ‘Indestructable’, ‘Disconnected’, and ‘Sun Dance’, the latter easily being my favourite of the three I’ve been very keen to get my ears around this offering and feel quite privileged to be able to do so.
Formed of members with a litany of experience from many different projects such as Haken, Slice The Cake, No Sin Evades His Gaze, Ravenface and Slugdge, you can see there’s many different angles, influences and styles that form Novena’s armoury of musical ability. On the whole, ‘Eleventh Hour’ showcases this incredibly well as in true prog style, there are uplifting choruses, breakdowns that are complete filth, abstract rhythms, dissonant melodies, lyrics that tell stories, and spoken word segments that detail intense memories and experiences.
’22:58’ and ’22:59’ function as the intro to the album, eventually breaking into a gospel like acapella before a melancholy intro as Ross’s unmistakable voice appears, juxtaposed with Gareth’s rhythmic gutturals. The guitarwork and the like strikes me as quite Rush or Dream Theater like with its stylish constant movement against the off-beat drums. Often it seems like every part of the band is playing its own thing but works together to create a complex and layered sound that flits between prog metal and jazz almost constantly.
‘Sun Dance’ is easily one of my favourites on this album, its music video is bloody great too, focused entirely on a couple dancing for the whole song. There’s something that really stands out with the acoustic guitar, Moat’s busy bass playing while the electrics just drone between two different chords on the verse, it almost sounds like it’s middle-eastern in it’s origin (I’m sure Harrison could probably explain exactly why that is). The chorus is immensely catchy too, something that can often go amiss with a lot of prog in the pursuit of complexity.
‘Disconnected’ starts back with the acapella intro, quite a happy sounding song this despite its overall message. Again its accompanying music video is a really good watch too, the song itself always has some sort of melody going somewhere in it and feels a lot shorter than it actually is – it keeps you engrossed. ‘Sail Away’ features one of Gareth’s signature spoken word parts that listeners of Slice The Cake will be familiar with, against a background of softly played piano, this makes for a quiet interval amongst the business of the other songs.
‘Lucidity’ gets to show us a bit more of Gareth’s uncleans against Ross’s cleans, showcasing Novena’s ability to mix distinct light and shade with their songwriting. At about ten and a half minutes, it’s quite a lengthly song, but this is prog, right? Nothing wrong with an epic length song that tells a story! In fact, part way through this ends up sounding a bit closer to some of Pink Floyd’s more dreamy parts from the likes of Dark Side Of The Moon.
‘Corazon’ again is another interesting one that’s essentially a statement of what Novena are capable of with going all in with Latin Jazz and guest vocals, building up to a massive crescendo at the end. Much like ‘Sun Dance’ does a fantastic job of showing off Novena’s talents. Another one of their singles follows, ‘Indestructable’, I do love me some piano mixed in with my metal but also this song often sounds quite pop-punk in its chorus which is by no means a bad thing. Even with it’s complementary “wah-oh-oh”, it’s poppy as hell and when I do see these guys live finally, you can guarantee I’ll be boogying in the pit. The breakdown with Gareth’s filthy uncleans are a bit jarring, but again, it’s prog, anything goes really!
The final two tracks on this album are lengthy epics in the form of ‘The Tyrant’ and ‘Prison Walls’. ‘The Tyrant’ is a slow, swelling track that has parts that are very reminiscent of some of Dream Theater’s work with long quiet parts before moving into a more bombastic, extended instrumental part with an epic stylish solo over the top of it. Finally, with ‘Prison Walls’, a 15-minute-long epic to finish, this starts with a classy hard rock-esque intro that really shows off some of Moat’s fantastic bass playing. I would say the main part of this song that sticks with you is Gareth’s spoken word piece, you can feel the pain and emotion in his voice retelling difficult memories of the past in direct juxtaposition to the first few minutes. ‘Prison Walls’ eventually plays out with a djenty, rhythmic outro repeating “It’s no-one’s fault” and we get more aggressive Gareth playing us out, lovely stuff.
It’s hard not to write a lot about what amounts to fairly lengthy prog albums because it’s a difficult thing to summarise what can often be busy, long, complex songs. Novena’s ‘Eleventh Hour’ is a great comeback and the start of a new era for these guys and I’m hoping for future live dates from them to go along with this. The singles they’ve released so far have shown the snappier side of Novena but the album’s longer tracks show far more of their repertoire.
FFO Dream Theater, Pink Floyd, Rush, Haken, Leprous
- ‘Eleventh Hour’ is released tomorrow (Friday 6 March). You can get your copy HERE.
- Novena play their album launch show at Nambucca on Friday 3 April. They have also just been confirmed to play UK Tech-Fest in July
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