Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Threshold
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release: 2012
Length: 75:39
Rating: 5/5
Threshold, the champions of British progressive metal, are total oddballs on the rock scene. In the solar system, the galaxy, you name it. With their cult album »Wounded Land« from 1993, they carved out a wide path in a world where they defined their own artistic, homegrown musical language. With every album, that artistic and distinctive voice only ran deeper.
»March Of Progress« is Threshold’s ninth studio album overall. It took the band a full five years to get it out of their system. It’s the first new album since original singer Damian Wilson came back to the fold, and the first for new guitarist Pete Morten. But more than the guitar shuffle, it’s Damian Wilson’s return that’s the real turning point for the band. During his first stint with the band, on the albums »Wounded Land« and »Psychedelicatessen«, his unique vocal approach and distinctive tone did a lot to shape the band’s eclectic expression, and fans never quite got over his departure until he came back.
In 2007, after the release of »Dead Reckoning«, vocalist Andrew »Mac« MacDermott left the band. Tragically, he passed away at the beginning of last August from a sudden kidney complication, when his kidneys failed even more suddenly. The albums with MacDermott carry a special expressive weight. With this singer the band didn’t just hold its ground on the scene, it kept evolving the whole way. After the slightly less convincing but still very high-quality »Subsurface« (2004), »Dead Reckoning« was surely the band’s darkest and hardest-hitting album, and MacDermott once again showed, with his brilliance and vocal uniqueness, that he was a fully formed figure and the charisma of Threshold. Once he decided to leave, Threshold really had no choice but to turn to Damian Wilson for help. Both singers, MacDermott and Wilson, are absolute one-offs, and the musical spirit of Threshold is their common denominator, and nobody else among singers comes close, since they have a very similar style, and only their vocal color sets them apart. Wilson can reach somewhat higher registers, but he can’t build up that distinctive aggression in the mid-range, which was MacDermott’s specialty. Both singers would, after all, fit in perfectly with any classically conceived heavy metal or power metal band.
»March Of Progress« is a different album. Different from anything recorded with MacDermott, in fact from anything Threshold have ever recorded up to this day. It’s a step onto new ground, onto the new ground of a new musical horizon. It feels very balanced, less of a »banger« than its predecessor. Threshold have still kept their melancholy, gloomy face, the specific face of so many bands from the British Isles. Don’t get me wrong. »March Of Progress« is, every single moment, a Threshold album from head to toe. Fittingly, given the album’s title, »March Of Progress« also sounds considerably more »progressive« than the predecessors with MacDermott on vocals. In fact, Threshold have never allowed themselves this much experimentation in their career. On »March Of Progress« they managed to keep all the compactness and ultra-melodic catchiness, and once again they’ve generously seasoned everything with drama-theater and bombast. That said, this album creeps in more slowly than is usually the case with earlier Threshold albums.
The moods are once again fully gripping, feeling more real than almost anything out there, and of course there’s Wilson’s remarkably sensitive, immersive vocal performance, which is downright brilliant. The man, who during his absence from Threshold »clocked in« with Headspace, Ayreon and Star One, has held on to all of his expressive power over the years, deepened it with maturity, and breathed a hypnotic dose of life and infectious swagger into the verses.
That »March Of Progress« is actually the band’s most progressive album ever isn’t something you get from the punchy opener Ashes, despite the middle instrumental section, where things flash radically for the first time with progressively broken rhythms and brilliant soloing in a dialogue between guitar and keyboards. It was also released as the lead single, and it’s marked by straightforward melodic lines, dressed up of course in the trademark structure of Threshold arranging: a central vocal that fully exploits the melodic range with authority, wrapped in a massive wall of riffing guitars, and with chants fitted out with harmonized vocal lines, backed by a vocoder as well. So, a catchy opener, just what you’d expect from die-hard »prog metallers«. Packed with Threshold drama and the required punch, sending shivers down your spine. In musically expressive terms, though, the rest of the album gets more and more interesting, we could even say exciting. That’s foreshadowed by the far more theatrical Return Of The Thought Police, in which the typical “Thresholdian” chorus melody takes over, while Staring At The Sun right after it is the first true prog beauty, and the first to seriously signal that »March Of Progress« is a detour into a new musical dimension for the band.
From Staring At The Sun on, the songs are weighed down further with sudden shifts in motifs and tempo changes. Despite a generous helping of seductive melody and bombast, the element of unpredictability, even a degree of spontaneity, is more exposed than ever. Calm, atmospheric passages, where Wilson’s delicate vocal sophistication really shines, give way to onslaughts of riff cannonade, which quite unobtrusively and very compatibly create new sonic landscapes and carry the listener toward new moods (the song Coda, for instance). This is an album you discover over a longer stretch of time. You slowly lift the veils of crafty, masterful songwriting. You slowly get to the core. This is an album that creeps into your ears more slowly, but once it »grabs« you, it grabs you for good. And it won’t come out of your CD player. That’s a fact. At least if you’re even a little bit musically perceptive and like to challenge yourself, too, to see how far you can reach.
The arrangement and development of the song Colophon is a real progressive odyssey and one of the most interesting points of »March Of Progress«, which for the first time in their career even brings Threshold close to the prog rockers Arena. The latter work harder-hitting from record to record, while the new Threshold album is a touch more sophisticated, balanced, but at the same time more progressively seasoned. So for the first time in their career, there’s a sensible parallel between Threshold and the neo-prog crowd Arena. Two bands from the British Isles, that is. With more varied keyboard arrangements than on any Threshold album to date, teasing out the progressive side. The Hours eases the weight of the experiment that Colophon leaves behind, and wins you over with its excellent incorporation of sampled loops, which strengthen the song’s bombastic mood. It’s one of the album’s most beautiful anthems.
The album calms down with That’s Why We Came, where Wilson’s full-blooded, sensual vocal expression once again comes into its own. Thanks to the outstanding keyboard work, living side by side fantastically with the massive wall of riffing guitars, the highlights of melody and bombast in its transcendental atmosphere make this one of the most beautiful and accomplished compositions on the album. A composition where the progressive and the listenable communicate perfectly. The closing stretch of the album, with the songs Don’t Look Down, Coda and above all the fantastic progressive epic suite Rubicon, is proof that Threshold have moved into a new dimension of creativity, because here the album gains additional experimentation of a kind Threshold have never allowed themselves in their career. If Don’t Look Down can still be »banally« labeled as prog metal reading material, the five-minute Coda that follows is not just one of the album’s darkest moments but also the song with the most unpredictable turn of events. It opens with a chorus that only repeats after two minutes of intense motif-shuffling, yet those motifs keep the song compact at every point.
If any song wins on this album, it’s Rubicon. This is truly an exceptional progressive piece. A symphonic progressive epic suite, the kind a true prog metal enthusiast dreams about. Punchy, fully exploiting every building block in the sonic spectrum, it bursts with many moods, tempo changes and outstanding melodies, and the atmosphere is packed with melancholy and gloom! Threshold won’t let you breathe for a second this time! More than ten minutes of prog heaven to close out this truly outstanding album.
It’s also worth tracking down the limited edition, which includes the excellent bonus track Divinity, where the band shows off a great feel for integrating sampled loops (intro to the verse, verse). The melodically gripping chorus even raises the question of whether this song would have been ideal as a single. So, despite the extremely theatrical finale with the epic Rubicon, Divinity is pretty much a mandatory epilogue to listening to »March Of Progress«. Another fantastic one, in other words.
»March Of Progress« is an album executed without a flaw. Perfect. Five years off, five years of piling up ideas, a shake-up of the lineup, Damian Wilson’s return to the Threshold camp. A fantastic new album. Challenging in every respect, the most progressive Threshold album to date, the most dynamic. A galaxy of brilliantly vivid soloing, restrained throughout, of course! At every step of the album.
»March Of Progress« is a milestone, with which Threshold move into a new phase of their creative epic. In doing so they’ve kept all the trademarks that have always put this band in a special place on the rock globe. In fact, »March Of Progress« is a new step toward deepening the homegrown artistic uniqueness of this outstanding band from the British Isles. No more, no less. I warmly recommend this album to everyone who knows how to enjoy the magic of progressive challenge fused with anthemic melodic polish! Adorned with outstanding production! »March Of Progress« is one of the most beautiful rock albums released this year, and in its grandeur it seriously challenges even the fantastic studio offshoot of the new Rush.
Line-up
Damian Wilson – vocals
Karl Groom – guitar
Pete Morten – guitar
Richard West – keyboards
Steve Anderson – bass guitar
Johanne James – drums
Production
Karl Groom & Threshold
Track list
01. Ashes
02. Return Of The Thought Police
03. Staring At The Sun
04. Liberty, Complacency, Dependency
05. Colophon
06. The Hours
07. That’s Why We Come
08. Don’t Look Down
09. Coda
10. The Rubicon
11. Divinity (bonus track)
