Quest For Fire
Lights From Paradise

THE REVIEW

Following their self-titled debut album, where monolithic sludge and stoner sounds reigned supreme, the Canadian quartet composed of Chad Ross, Andrew Moszynski (the two former Deadly Snakes), Josh Bauman, and Mike Maxymuik shifts direction with this “Lights From Paradise.”

It does so by further confirming those capacities of technical skill combined with a good dose of inventiveness that the first work hinted at. While on one hand, they remain grounded in the dusty earth with markedly hard-rooted episodes like “Set Out Alone,” “Confusion's Home,” or the splendid “In The Place Of A Storm,” it is equally true that driven guitars and energetic rhythms are nonetheless traversed by a spiritual and extracorporeal tension.

But it's when the hyperdrive is engaged that they soar towards stellar distances, carried by tracks like “Hinterland Who's Who” or “Session Of Light” (other gems of this LP). Cosmic progressions that culminate in astral explosions, chanting interstellar journeys, evoking Pink Floyd-like reminiscences from both the sumptuous melodic openings and Ross's Gilmour-esque tone.

The mysticism that permeates the work is never a distorted and obsessive hallucination but is characterized by visionary contemplation (“Psychic Seasons” is another gem), presenting itself as an ideal sonic catalyst for otherworldly urges.

A liquid metaphor of the dichotomous human nature, this album projects us into an empyrean limbo, pleasantly floating between the corporeal and the immaterial, suspended between the underworld and the stars.