Progressive metal is a crowded genre lately. Dropping their debut just a year after Haken, in my mind there has since existed a parallel between Caligula’s Horse and their British comrades in prog. Starting with In Contact, the band has leaned into the same kind of djent-influenced poppy sound that Haken also took a detour into on Vector, but perhaps a better comparison is Voyager, who have moved in that realm for much longer. In the case of Haken, they tend to write progressively and fail creatively when they don’t stick the landing. This trend that affects the genre has the unfortunate effect of making bands all sound too similar to one another, despite having some unique direction of their own. Caligula’s Horse is very adept at their vocal hooks, I find, so it’s no surprise that they lean into the vocals for this newest album—though in all their eras, these hooks typically leave me cold. Charcoal Grace is a return to the kind of songwriting that attempts to develop a lot over their runtime of extended-length songs. However, the album fails catastrophically in trying to recapture this style.
Charcoal Grace tries to be “atmospheric” and focuses a lot on the vocals and concept. Book-ended by two long songs and carrying a lengthy suite through the middle, Charcoal Grace‘s structure seems simple enough. “The Stormchaser” is a particularly strong track that utilizes a progressive build up in a post rock fashion to great effect, the crescendo standing out as the album’s finest moment. Songs like “The World Breathes With Me” and “Mute” similarly rely on building up slowly but with some heavy contrasts and sometimes unfortunate chugging riffs. “Golem” has an annoying whispered rap vocal hook early on, but otherwise it’s a fairly snappy number. While these songs are solid yet a bit unremarkable compared to the band’s earlier work, the middle is where Charcoal Grace feels unsustainable in its ambition. The suite named after the title of the album consists of four songs that all spend around 18 minutes building up to the tragic “Charcoal Grace IV: Give Me Hell”. The post builds are here too, but the first two parts are similar in construction seemingly without direction, and part three mainly spends its time on softly crooned vocals. The payoff at the end of this is too little to late despite its wonderfully dour mood, and the suite seems overly focused on the lyrical concept while the instrumental side treads water with stunted emotional expression.
Adding to the time Charcoal Grace feels like it is suspended in air, “Sail” follows the four-part suite with another sedate number that takes the total time spent between any inspired writing to almost 28 minutes. I am unsure if these softer moments are attempting something like a Pink Floyd ambiance, but they don’t reach that kind of poignance. I don’t mind softer material, as I enjoy works like Shadows of the Sun (Ulver), The White (Agalloch) and Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd). But that raw feeling that those albums have is nowhere to be found on Charcoal Grace. Scuttlegoat (our lord and savior) and I are often in disagreement about how good modern progressive metal can be when writing in a “linear” fashion, meaning without many recurring themes inside the songs themselves. Here there will be no disagreement between us; Caligula’s Horse don’t seem capable of writing a coherent album on Charcoal Grace, despite their competence as individual musicians.
