“Sidereal Journey” is the third, final, and best album from Oxiplegatz, Alf Svensson’s short lived post At the Gates solo project. It’s a strange little album, with outsized ambition, comprised of one epic song divided into thirty-three short tracks. The sound is generally metallic but diverse, falling somewhere between blast-beat mayhem per early ATG, upbeat symphonic rock, Broadway musicals, waltzy spring time music, and weird Modern dissonance, with a heavy emphasis on the weird.
The lead guitar is highly original, winding like a neurotic snake over really long chord progressions and snap-happy programmed percussion. The synths provide warped “futuristic” experimentation (think the “Bladerunner” score on a budget and you get the gist). Guitar lines fizzle into hyperactive blast-beats which suddenly transform into waltzy music ready-made for figure skating in the Rhineland – all of this madness is unified under Alf’s seriously deranged story about space survival.
The lyrical bent of the album is first rate science fiction with a hard “S”- no Millennium Falcon shooting around the Galaxy at the measly speed of light in these lyrics. This is genuine science fiction about a theoretical life form seeking out new planets to terraform after a nearby star destroys their home world. Alf growls, but also employs a low nasal voice to tell the oddball story, accompanied by Sara Svensson, whose more refined voice lies somewhere between a Tim Rice songbird and Annek van Giersbergen.
Sidereal Journey is death metal for those who like invention over pretension and ambition over budgets. With its flat production and high eccentricity, any possibility of it finding a popular audience is next to nil. This is for weirdo metal connoisseurs exclusively- you know who you are! And you know you must have this album.
Note: this review is edited and considerably reworked from the original, which can be found at http://www.ssmt-reviews.com
-James Slone
VITALS:
Release: 1998
Label: Seasons Of Mist
Avantgenre: Technical Sci-fi As Conceptualized By Tim Rice
Duration: 41:46
Origin: Sweden
Official site: None
Review online since: 31.08.2007 / 02:43:10
TRACKLIST:
01. A Black Hole Is Swallowing The Sun…
02. They Learned Of Its Existence…
03. For Persistence…
04. Bringer Of Obliteration…
05. Into Nowhere…
06. For Persistence…
07. So It’s Our Final Hour…
08. The Light From The Perishing Sun…
09. Ahead – The Universe !
10. No Longer Will We Be The Meek Ones…
11. How Could We Ever Know…
12. Head For That Star…
13. As One Surveys This Ocean…
14. The Iondrive A Silent Vibration…
15. Several Planet In Orbit…
16. Enemies !?
17. Once More Proven – We Are Not Alone
18. Lightspeed – Flunge Into Hyperspace
19. No Clue To Where This Jump Is Taking Them…
20. Breathless…
21. Turning Up The Power, Accelerating Again…
22. This Time Passage Was Violent…
23. Rings, Spread Like Rippled Water…
24. They Stare Unblinking…
25. Eternal Night…
26. How Many Worlds…
27. These Beings Failed And Perished…
28. Ahead Once More…
29. This Journey Has Taken Us…
30. The Moon Was Land In Orbit…
31. Can This Be What We Hore For…
32. Teraform – Alter The Enviroment…
33. And So One Day The Sleepers Waken..
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