Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Father
Label: Dallas Records
Release: 2005
The first time I stuck this album into the CD player, I just collapsed, started staring into space and couldn’t snap out of the shock. So fresh, so alive, so layered and boldly brazen in its experimenting, so much sound bursting out in unlimited quantities, and so much of that unquenchable hunger for perfection, for serving up only the best, you can feel as a result! That’s Father with their debut (!) “Inspirita”. And Father are no steroid-pumped, fish-brained Americans, but our fine neighbors from Rijeka! Rijeka has always been a rock’n’roll mecca!
So let’s start peeling Father apart and pigeonholing them too. Don’t go thinking the album opens with an “Our Father”. The foundation is a massive riff straight out of the generation that tore through the early-to-mid nineties with Alice In Chains, Machine Head, or the late-nineties Slipknot. Even at the root, the genre differences between those three bands are huge. Add the other pieces of the mosaic as the album’s veils get pulled back, second by second, and the whole thing quickly becomes genre-wise impossible to pin down, and we realize that Father’s overall musical identity is much, much more. It’s above standard, it’s something different, it’s something completely new.
Let’s stay with the guitars for starters. Father steer clear of guitar solos. Everything is focused on the first ball, a direct hook between the eyes. A simple but penetrating riff that instantly sends blood racing through your veins, under even higher pressure! But this simplified guitar work and riff minimalism is compensated by an out-of-this-world rhythm section that at moments comes across downright funky – jazzy – prog-rock experimental. The rhythm section is constantly looking for room to express itself freely. Progressive in the purest sense of the word. The rhythm breaks are so numerous and so relentless across the record that in places you could almost say the drums solo through the entire thing. It’s hands constantly roaming over the whole drum fortress, coaxing out different rhythmic combinations that never once jar, never once snap the album’s red thread. It’s the simple and the complex fused in an ideal way, and the record flows through its running time with an extremely low viscosity coefficient – or, to put it more precisely, it tears along like a wild river full of intoxicating turbulence, delighting the demanding listener and the one chasing a “groove” that sinks deep and irreversibly under the skin of your ears on the very first listen. Melodic minimalism and rhythmic complexity. You could call them an alternative progressive metal band, except the word metal is at times downright disturbing here, not to say insulting!
The vocal, hugely expressive at every single moment and with an excellent command of English, is the ideal choice and the crown of Father’s sound, and it completes the album’s drama! The album drowns in the vocalist’s emotions, they really do seethe on it. The tracks are compact, self-contained stories. Each one offers a completely different musical experience. In fact, analyzing is harmful, because with every listen the genre layering fills you with new feelings about what you’re hearing. You perceive the same story differently on repeat listens, which means there are many stories inside it! In short, it’s a bone you’ll gnaw on for a very, very long time. And only albums that are masterpieces and carry the stamp of a “timeless” creation can usually boast a bone like that.
Father are so damn different from everything else, so damn infused with freshness and wit in how they create. They can be arrogant and sentimental at the same time, sharp and, in the next moment, shockingly sophisticated. The album ripples through countless moods. It bears the stamp of intensity and high drama, spinning through an hour of material. Whether it’s arrogance, soft fragility, warmth and sensuality, or a full-blown hurricane of aggression, the album is wrapped throughout in an intense feeling of darkness and drama.
Cynosure is the ideal choice to open the album. A massive wall of sound, with a smeared riff covering the bulk of the sound, a rhythm section that’s separated out in the production and boosted in volume, and the metallic clatter of the drums bring a contrasting sonic leveler and underline the depth, the dynamics and the sheer freshness of the sound. The male vocal sits front and center, living through everything with real intensity and emotional commitment. The dynamics leap through the melodic drama of the chorus, put together simply but shamelessly catchy. A chorus you can start whistling in an instant, in other words, something with big-hit potential. Believe me, if Father were an established MTV name, Cynosure would be a hit. Machina carries just as much potential right behind it, and so does the terrorizingly rowdy Emon. The fourth track turns things quite upside down. This is where all those many other pieces make sense and dissolve the “metal” label like a soap bubble. We’re not even a stone’s throw from the truth, because with Father you’ll also find elements of jazz, even seventies disco funk, which, like a fine spice in small doses, build great music! Lost In Words starts out acoustic and sophisticated, metallic drums creating the mood in the background, the tension building from loop to loop until it erupts with massive distortion and lands in a melodically tragic chorus, which once again brings a poker hand of aces of catchy, listenable intoxication, and a new round can begin. Extraordinary waves of dynamics! Seashore is a classic example of this kind of moment, the atmosphere growing second by second until it boils over. Here, marvel directly at how the sound grows out of the drums. From the marginal tenderness of crackling fire and pastoral violin accompaniment to a proper tribal closing celebration of united sub-rhythms, which ensure spontaneous development and an extraordinary dose of unpredictability. Yes! One of the extraordinary attributes of “Inspirita” is the album’s high degree of unpredictability. The colorful choice of vocal lines by Mihael Prosen, with wittily chosen melodic deviations, brings in a welcome measure of dissonance in certain places, which adds even more to the album’s dramatic atmosphere.
On “Inspirita” the elements of complexity and simplicity flow into each other in a gorgeous dialogue, and the band’s refined feel for subtlety and softness is just as breathtaking, able to rage out in a heartbeat through the snarling fangs of a toxic riff into a completely different mood. We’re talking about a modern, extremely fashionable approach, and in this respect Father immediately caught up with the world’s best. In modern “groovy” production and in fresh otherness. They’re a band with a recognizable style, uniqueness, their own recognizable beat, their very own Father sound! A band breaking new ground and discovering fields unexplored. How that’s even possible in 2007, when it seems everything’s already been said, Father show better than anyone. They’re a real gem of music and a band that will bring us plenty more exciting moments! It’s music aimed at the world, and with it Father boldly prove that, with this global outlook, they’re the first in Croatia to outgrow national complexes.
Line-up
Mihael Prosen – vocals
Davor Tomič Pinky – guitar
Dario Pazanin – guitar
Franjo Jardas – bass
Saša Vukosav – drums
Production
Father
Track list
1. Cynosure
2. Machina
3. Emon
4. Lost In Words
5. Vasaii
6. Never Come Back
7. Sayana
8. Sun
9. Ultimate Selfrighteous Army
10. Chigla Pegla
11. Inspirita
12. Seashore
Album length: 60.21
