A Hope for Home
In Abstraction

The city had awakened quietly, as usual. It was a tranquil provincial town, not far from the big urban centers but not so detached from the countryside either, at least not so much that you couldn't still smell the rain when it started to settle on the wheat fields or began to wet the large oaks that marked its borders.

Lazily, people left their homes, greeted each other with friendly gestures (everyone knew everyone, after all, it was practically a large village), and got into their cars to head to work. The wives were either in the garden watering the plants, in the kitchen preparing breakfast for the children (who, even though they were on vacation, being summer, hadn't lost the habit of waking up at "school" time), or on the street bidding farewell to their husbands. The air, although it was a beautiful late summer morning, was strangely heavy and suspended, not a leaf moved, and no birds chirped from the many trees lining the pathway, but at that moment no one noticed, as they were groggy from waking up. And then came the unexpected.

Strange creaking sounds began to be heard, but no one understood where they were coming from. At first, they were light, "crick crack" sounds reminiscent of the sound of feet stepping on dry leaves, a sound obviously amplified immensely, since everyone distinctly heard it. Instinctively, people looked at the sky: not their houses, not the nearby woods, but the sky, which had gone from clear to increasingly leaden. Where were those clouds coming from?

The sun was now entirely obscured by an impenetrable curtain, and when the last ray of light was nullified by the clouds, an immense "crack" reverberated through the air. The noise that was heard, and that terrified everyone by shaking the earth to its core, was very similar to what is heard in movies when glaciers crack open: a sharp, dull blow followed by almost sinister moans, which were now clearly coming from the sky. The canopy, which had been serene until a few minutes before and was now terribly dark, was descending towards the earth more and more: it would collapse here and there, then stop a few kilometers lower, but its descent towards the earth seemed unstoppable. It was as if someone, with an invisible sledgehammer, was dislodging the mighty pillars that divided it from the inhabited world of men. Panic spread among the people, but it did not have time to breach everyone's heart. The umpteenth dull "crack," and the sky suddenly collapsed, and just as if someone had thrown a black and very heavy blanket over your head, everything went dark: the world collapsed in on itself, sky and earth reunited and annihilated each other.

"Though from the start we've all diverged, all ascending paths must converge."

When you combine the ethereal and fragile arpeggios of Sigur Rós period "( )" with the might of Cult Of Luna, the melodic flair of Explosions in the Sky, and the emotion of the ever-mourned Isis, you have to be careful; you risk creating a disaster without head or tail, a mishmash lacking cohesion that might confuse the listener. But if you manage to find the perfect balance, then the album you produce will likely be titled "In Abstraction," and perhaps your band will be called A Hope For Home.

These guys from Portland have managed to craft a truly remarkable work, seven tracks of graceful yet incisive and hard post-metal, an album at times touching and intense, capable of moving with its underlying tragedy, which often flows into an epicness that is never bombastic or self-serving or into a sweetness that is not at all baroque and sugary.

Released about a year ago, "In Abstraction" is a must-listen for those who love the groups mentioned above: it will take some time to process, you'll discover it gradually, but once you have made it your own, you'll feel the need to listen to it again every so often, to feel good and "at home" like when talking to an old friend you haven't seen in a long time.