Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: 10. 12. 2021
Production: Erik Gafvelin Wiss
Album length: 53.11 min
Genre: Art Rock
Rating: 8.5/10
With their studio debut “High On Deception,” Cap Outrun set themselves up as a band with a distinct sound and approach. It’s a musical form that’s entirely their own and a little off the beaten path, which gives not just “High On Deception” but the band as a whole a recognizable profile and musical character. The songs are backed up by interesting modulations of the lead melodies and motifs, and the band isn’t shy about reaching for more complex time signatures, yet never for a second do they lose the thread of the main hooks and melodies.
Even though it might feel like a brand-new outfit, the Cap Outrun story goes back a long way. The band was founded back in 2007 by guitarist Andrée Theander and keyboardist Erik Gafvelin Wiss while the two were studying music and audio production together in Skara/Skövde. In 2008 they put out the EP “Influence Grind,” which they produced themselves, and then went quiet. The silence was broken when Andrée and Erik decided to bring Cap Outrun back to life, and with their musical vision they wanted to serve up something that doesn’t hide its love for the gains of AOR, or for melodic rock, while the influence of progressive rock and heavy metal is clearly traceable too. And more. As you can hear on several parts of the album, especially where the keyboards (omnipresent anyway) step out front in the arrangements, the band doesn’t shy away from throwing in elements of jazz either. One example is As Long As You Believe, an intriguing mashup of melodic-rock musicality, where the mid-eight ‘wanders’ off into jazzy structures, while bristling metal guitar phrasing combined with broken rhythms points to a progressive-metal orientation. The listener gets a similar experience right in the middle of the album with its longest composition, the nine-minute Shadows On the Wall, which opens in an unmistakably progressive-metal and progressive-rock vein. What matters here is the realization that seemingly incompatible elements from separate genres reach an exciting kind of reconciliation, which guarantees listenability. Not just on these two tracks, but across the whole album. In fact, the tail end of the album is even more progressive than you’d dare to expect, especially given how it starts. The closing Dopamine Overflow is the album’s all-instrumental number, and metal phrasing definitely takes the dominant position there, and combined with a ‘broken’ rhythmic structure it once again picks up that progressive-metal suspension.
Of course, parts of the album are at times given over to the development of predatory pomp rhetoric, which will be interesting to AOR fans. That’s especially prominent on the album’s predatory opener Crazy Enough, and right after it on the title track, but as the album goes on, the crew of musicians makes it clear that the whole concept of the musical expression is set up much more broadly. The team that recorded the album is very experienced and made up of technically chiseled, let’s even say classically trained (schooled), musicians.
“High on Deception” is a surprisingly successful studio debut, set up with huge ambition. What’s surprising is that the band managed to pull off such an exceptional cross-genre reconciliation. None of this would exist without the hard-earned experience, high talent and serious mileage of the musicians in the lineup, led by the excellent singer Chandler Mogel of Outloud. The core members have real experience and seasoning, the kind that only comes with the years. In the meantime, while Cap Outrun were dormant, Andrée Theander became a session musician, a guitar teacher, and founded his own AOR/west-coast band, Theander Expression, while Erik Gafvelin Wiss set up his own studio and started working professionally in music production. Before the reactivation of Cap Outrun, Erik had made a name for himself as an audio engineer, working among others on albums by Creye, Cruzh and Arctic Rain. So it’s no surprise that he took on the role of producer on “High On Deception.”
In short! With “High On Deception,” Cap Outrun are putting everyone on notice that they’re definitely no flash in the pan. The album’s arrangements carry an extremely interesting and appealing flow of events, and the band never for a second neglects its focus on highly theatrical musicality. That’s why Cap Outrun won’t satisfy less demanding listeners; right from the start they’re aiming at a select audience that’s a bit choosier and drawn to the adventurous challenge of artistry, and fans of progressive rock and progressive metal are by no means excluded. Cap Outrun’s strength is that, already on their debut, the band carries its own recognizable musical character and a pile of starting points to take it even further artistically and polish it aesthetically in the future.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Crazy Enough
2. High On Deception
3. Disaster Mindset
4. In The Shade Of The Masquerade
5. Shadows On The Wall
6. Our Brightest Day
7. My Destination
8. Run Before We Walk
9. As Long As You Believe
10. Dopamine Overflow
Lineup:
Chandler Mogel – vocals, backing vocals
Andrée Theander – guitar, backing vocals, additional bass guitar on “As Long As You Believe”
Erik Gafvelin Wiss – keyboards, programming
Linus Abrahamson – bass guitar
Carl Tudén – drums, percussion
Guest musicians:
Hugo Lundwall – bass guitar on ”Run Before We Walk”
Sebastian Freij – cello on ”Our Brightest Day”
