Amplifier's self-titled debut was a stunning release, a powerful demonstration of how prog rock could be given a contemporary spin with thrilling results. It had songs - long songs - of shimmering brilliance. It also had staggering sonic impact, with basslines that tore from the speakers and socked the listener right in the chest. It also won them a tour with fellow Mancinian neo-proggers Oceansize, whose Mike Vennart makes an appearance as backing vocalist on 'The Octopus.'
The subsequent album releases, 'The Astronaut Dismantles HAL' and 'Outsider' were both good - really good - but suffered from the fact the band had set expectations so high with their debut. On 'The Octopus,' Amplifier haven't only made a return to form to produce an album that equals that debut but surpasses it. Three years in the making, they've deliberated and tangled with details and deep concepts to deliver an album that's nothing short of colossal in every respect.
It is, of course, immensely proggy. It's not just the longer than a lifetime running times of some of the songs, or the fact it fills two CDs (or three pieces of vinyl) either. 'The Octopus' revisits and expands upon the themes that connect much of the band's previous work: space / time, interplanetary exploration... it's all there, and presented in a full spectrum of brilliant dazzling lights. Yes, 'The Octopus' is concept album. In fact, it's the mother of all concept albums, a concept so large and nebulous as to encapsulate all other concepts within its inestimable vastness. Hell, the limited edition comes with the discs stowed within the covers of a 70-page hardbound book, containing an experimental text written by guitarist / vocalist Sel (who also produced and mixed the album). The band certainly set themselves an immense task in the creation of 'The Octopus,' a record they hope will take on a life of its own, beyond the confines of being 'the third album by Amplifier.' If ever there was an album that has the potential to achieve this high ambition, it's this one.
A crackling whirl of dark ambience in the form of 'The Runner' paves the way for 'Minion's Song', a piano-led piece of prog pageantry. It’s on ‘Intergalactic Spell,’ the first epic of the album - and there are many - that things really get going, with a brass fanfare heralding the arrival of the big guitar sound. It's the kind of sound that could alter the orbit of a planet around its sun. 'The Wave' brings the drums to the fore, every beat an earth-shattering explosion that binds the megalithic riff together. Everything to this point builds perfectly for the nine-minute title track. Built around a guitar motif that's washed in delay, it drifts gently, like a calm ocean, before the storm of thunderous distortion breaks.
The attention to details doesn't mean they've lost focus of what's always been the band's strength: rocking out. The riffs are bigger, fiercer and louder than ever, and the close attention to the production means that they hit with phenomenal force and speaker-shredding intensity. There are plenty of gentler, more atmospheric moments to counter the thunderous maelstroms, too. Disc one closes with 'White Horses at Sea / Utopian Daydream' and 'Training White Horses on the Stock Exchange', a brace of swirling epics that drift and meander and twist and turn every which way. Time becomes irrelevant, and the physical world becomes a mere figment of the imagination as the music unfurls and expands in all directions.
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Disc two begins with the mystically-tinged 'The Sick Rose', in which William Blake's poem set to a serpentine guitar motif that builds to a succession of crescendos. It fits perfectly, and is both testament to Blake's poetic brilliance and Amplifier's inspired treatment of the material. 'Interstellar' is every bit as enormous and multi-dimensional as the title suggests, and is classic Amplifier. The mid-section of the disc continues to push into territories new, before the powerhouse chugging guitar kicks back in on 'Fall of the Empire,' which is a master class in heavy-duty prog. 'Oscar Night / Embryo' reveals a softer side of the band, and feels like waving a bittersweet farewell to earth and life as we know it, before 'Forever and More' burns a long trail through the darkness to the end... or is it only the beginning?
The real difficulty in reviewing an album such as this - or, specifically, this album as there are very few albums 'like' this - is conveying just how enormous it is, and on how many levels it functions. It's physical, cerebral, multi-sensory, cosmic, inter-galactic... the simple fact is that no matter how many adjectives I may care to throw at it, there’s no way I can reasonably or adequately summarise or encapsulate ‘The Octopus’ in a mere review. Yes, it's a trip, it's a groove sensation, and it transports the listener to 'another dimension', and beyond. It may only be January, but 'The Octopus' is already a very strong contender for album of 2011.
Amplifier Online
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