8. Isildur's Bane
and Steve Hogarth – Colours Not Found in Nature
Hello again to
Sweden! Will there ever be a year without multiple Swedish acts in my
top 10? Definitely not 2017… Sweden's Isildur's Bane is a group I
was unfamilliar with, but getting Steve Hogarth on board is a
surefire way to get my attention. More of a collective than a band,
they were a fuly instrumental group until now.
Isildur's Bane makes
complex, heavily textured, jazzy long-form music that doesn't shy
away from big hooks. Their music varies wildly from quiet to huge,
sometimes within the same song. From the intimacy of “Periperal
Vision”, the jingle-jangle of “The Random Fires” to the
exuberance of “Incandescent”, not two songs sound the same.
As for Hogarth: any
fears that this album will just end up sounding like Marillion can
quickly be put to rest. His prescence is much more akin to the H who
made that album with Richard Barbieri: subdued, layered,
philosophical, esoteric. The righteous, straightforward anger of FEAR
has dissolved. Instead he treats us to some meditative, personal and
slightly cryptic lyrics. Why does that guy keep ending up in bands with Tolkien-inspired names?
The result is a
strange, electic album that takes a good while to get into, but
Marillion fans are used to that by now. Taken as a whole, it remains
a somewhat disjointed affair. But, its true beauty reveals itself
soon enough, especially on the individual song level.
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