Artist: Spires
Title: Spiral Of Ascension
Type: Album
Label: Self Released

Okay bands, do you want a little tip? It sounds REALLY obvious, but seriously, you might want to make sure when you are sending out CDs to reviewers that you put enough postage on the envelope. As a general rule of thumb, a jewel case CD requires a large stamp, and when a reviewer has to pay £1.40 to receive an unsolicited disc that may or may not be any good it’s a sure fired way to get your album or demo judged under a much harsher light. After traipsing 2 miles, risking life and limb in 9 inches of snow and treacherous ice to collect this CD from the post office, I was on one hand thinking “this better be really f***ing good!” but on the other secretly hoping it would be sufficiently terrible to give the band a right old slating.

Well okay, shit happens and we all make mistakes; wag finger and slap on the wrist…in actual fact there are very few bad things to say about this album. ‘Equilibrium’ is the opening track which to be honest doesn’t inspire too much confidence as the vocals kick in sounding a bit on the feeble side and at this point things could really go either way. As the track progresses things certainly heat up, taking on various twists and turns at times subtly sweeping up into a dramatic and powerful chorus and at others moving into a much more deathly passage. Here is a band that applies the technicality of a band like Dream Theater without being overly complex or alienating, and it blends skilfully together with the extreme elements; fierce drums clatter away in the background while over the top there is a mixture of downtuned riffs and gliding guitar solos.

In true progressive fashion, some of the numbers here go way past the 10 minute mark such as ‘Broken Hourglass’ at 13:34 minutes. There’s a real sense of Mediterranean warmth to tracks like this one, which begins with a beautifully mellow and dark sounding melody as the vocalist subtly croons over the top; there’s at times a real sense of wonder to his tones while he can just as easily move into a deathly but wholly coherent growl. At times I am reminded of Mikael Akerfeldt, he has that diversity and is particularly good with the clean, melancholic tones. There’s something quite dreamy to ‘Symmetry’ with its understated reflectiveness and I can kind of feel myself getting drawn into the airy guitar melodies on this one. Given the length of tracks like this and ‘Spiral Of Ascension’ I can see the album being quite tedious to those who like their metal a bit more straight-up heavy but if you like really beautiful, mellow music then this is worth a listen. There’s a real skilfulness to the way they shift so easily from these intense, dreamy sounds into more brutal, deathly passages and it definitely works. It’s early days for this band given this is their debut album and it’s good to see something decent come out of Manchester. In time and with a bit of work these could be Britain’s answer to Opeth.

http://www.myspace.com/spiresmetal