Release Date - 24th March 2023
Label - Season of Mist
Words - Tony Bliss
As much as progressive metal can - with the best will in the world - feel a tad indulgent and exhausting to many (and even an ungodly mess of ideas to some), the best bands just have that special something, that magical songwriting elixir that evaporates all preconceptions and allows them to exist in their own single genre of one. Ne Obliviscaris have long since established their reputation as an annoyingly clever bunch, and the bewildering breadth of their sonic vision will be familiar to fans of Between The Buried And Me and Opeth - at least in terms of spirit and intent - but as fourth album Exul exhibits with that familiar no-fucks-given gusto, they still sound quite unlike anything else around.
Indeed, the very fact that opener ‘Equus’ was to serve as the album's first single tells you everything you need know about the Ne Obliviscaris ethos - a twelve-minute plus voyage through stormy tech-death waters which so often drifts between an immaculate, almost folk-rock idea of melody and windswept, shrieking into the starry-sky extreme metal (think Borknagar or Omnium Gatherum, only bigger), that it might be overwhelming if every second didn’t flow as naturally as it does, the track moving and mutating with the ensemble grace of musicians who are quite clearly world-class at this stuff.
Picking out highlights is something of a thankless task as Exul, quite by default, is simply a sustained barrage of jaw-dropping moments throughout, and best consumed in one gluttonous whole. Even having said that the albums sprawling, two-part centrepiece ‘Misericorde’ (‘I - As The Flesh Fails’ and ‘II - Anatomy Of Quintessence’) is a thing of wonder, with the former taking a self-assured step into lounge-bar jazz terrority, and the later a largely instrumental mood-piece, vocalist/violinist Tim Charles’ tear-stained strings lending a drama and class to this brooding mini-symphony (and indeed the rest of the record) that is not only rare but closer to downright unheard of in the metal underground.
From here, ‘Suspyre’ manages to be a quintessentially prog-rock experience and a modern death metal band on all-out attack mode - fretless bass and scintillating lead-breaks all present and correct - ‘Graal’ veers left and right on a roiling undercurrent of black metal blasting, and closer ‘Anhedonia’ is three and a half minutes of piano-led anxiety, the shadow-laden atmosphere conjured by the sparse keys and rasping violins more something built to soundtrack a contemporary horror film than round off a prog-metal record. Long time devotees would expect nothing less than this artful extravaganza, however these six tracks as so enthralling, and bursting with so much dynamic colour, that even by their own lofty standard Exul is a profoundly brilliant career high-point for Ne Obliviscaris. How they can up the ante further than this is anyone's guess.
9/10
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