Red Sparowes
At The Soundless Dawn

It's tough times. Now how do we talk about Isis, Neurosis, Cult Of Luna, Mare (from whom I frankly expect the finishing blow), Breach, Pelican, and company after this At the Soundless Dawn? Frankly, don't get me wrong, this is the classic album of "hey what the hell are you still doing here? The show's over and it's time to go home, now it's just us left".

It's the perfect album, the top of the class. Certainly predictable, given the level of refinement reached by the post-rock and post-core currents, especially the latter, since not even a bad album comes out even if you paid gold for it, and in fact, the Red Sparowes, who are nothing more than the union of the two, could only create a small masterpiece. Done and done. You could point out that they're not the first to arrive, and in the end, they've only mixed on the palette the colors already prepared by others, but an album with guitars so GYBE, melodies that Giardini di Mirò are still standing outside the shop window with snotty noses staring in amazement, a general speed more fitting for post-core, erasing the dangerous slumbers in Cult Of Luna style, well you can't help but love an album like this.

They have completely eliminated the annoying (for some) circular structures more akin to a drunken jam session among friends typical of some post-rock groups and fully embraced the marvelous secret of the more traditional song structure, which certain "phenomena" view with disdain as being so un-artsy. The Red Sparowes pick the best from here and there, "so where's the merit?" you might say. Well, the merit is in creating an album that flows like a mathematical theorem, an album where there's not a single element out of place (not even the solitary drone that pops up like a mushroom at the end of the album), where everything has been so well-tested by other "beta testers," if they could be called that, to leave your unyielding eyebrow steady without straining it with expressions of denial, decidedly misplaced. It's curious then that within the Red Sparowes project, there are let's say the second ranks of Neurosis and Isis, demonstrating how, especially regarding the two involved from Isis, small masterpieces can be produced even without daddy Turner.
This might not please someone, since at the creation of the perfect blend between post-rock and post-core perhaps some much more renowned alchemist had been thinking for ages, the Red Sparowes, emerge from the hedge behind which they had been watching the scene for years, meticulously taking notes, and outdo everyone in the final sprint.

What's the point of a follow-up to Panopticon now?