Exivious — Liminal
The band creates clever, heady arrangements of stacked consonant chords that should be familiar to fans of classic fusion like Allan Holdsworth as well as the brainier side of shoegaze like Cocteau Twins. As musician's music and as jazz fusion, this deserves a perfect rating, perfectly created that thoughtful evening mood, and serving as magnificent brainfood. There are reams of odd yet comfortable tonal shifts to notice. Considered as technical metal, it is not so effective, as it lacks significant aggression.
The mood is profoundly light, playful and spiritually open on this album. One might say there is not a shred of negativity to be found; it is purely a tool for uplifting and empowering. Perhaps this is its downfall as well; I find it hard to relate to such undiluted cleanliness and purity. Some change in mood would have created more of a narrative flow, as well, and allowed more opportunity for memorable moments. It seems to blur together, though it is a pleasant blur.
The highlight for me here is the guitar solos, with loads of expressive liquid vibrato and a smooth, chorused tone, a 'wah' almost like a singing voice; perfect. Steve Vai, Allan Holdsworth and Devin Townsend are obvious influences to this style of playing. To my ears, these are the most soulful moments on the album, and luckily, at least one appears in every song.
The only really strange bit is exactly halfway through the album during "Triguna", a breakdown in which the band plays an atonal, spiralling pattern which ascends upwards in a dizzying circle, repeating in odd but consistent meter. The guitar is processed into an odd, filtered and alien texture. This is the only minute in which the veil of 'angelic' harmony falls away from the music.
The album is perhaps an exhausting listen when considered as a whole. Though frequently beautiful, and emotionally driven (rather than feeling like a technical exercise), the music is still note-heavy, and occupies a somewhat uncomfortable middle ground between heavy music and jazz fusion: the musician's touch is so light that I can't perceive anything about the album as truly 'heavy'. It sounds much like jazz fusion compositions produced in the thick, compressed style of metal, exhausting on the ears compared with the dynamicism and transparency of jazz. Good as the guitar distortions used in the many strummed chord progressions are, I feel I would enjoy the album significantly more if most of these were played with clean tones, as the blissed out, relaxed and consonant sound of most of the progressions and melodies reminds me of kicking back after a long day, as the sun sets.
In conclusion, this is an enjoyable album of lush, beautiful and extremely positive music in the jazz fusion vein. Anyone who dislikes cleanly produced, musicianship focused music will certainly dislike this album, and should avoid, but avid fans of fusion of similar groups such as Cynic, Devin Townsend or especially Disperse would surely love this and spend many hours with it. I do not find this album memorable as the aforementioned bands, but it is a certainly a work to be respected and something I will likely return to in the future. A little grit or deviation of tone would have done the album good, but I know there are many out there looking for precisely this sound, and it is done masterfully here. I am glad to see this niche expanding.