Artist: AtmOsfear
Label: Progrock Records
Release: 2009
Runtime: 71:28
Rating: 5/5
“Zenith” is the new album from Hamburg (Germany) progressive metallers AtmOsfear.The band has been around since 1996 and this is barely their third album. This is surely not a case of professionals who live off music. Unless they’re music teachers or session musicians. Well, what I meant to say was: “professional” in the sense of writing your own original music. And that’s exactly the point of AtmOsfear. Writing original music for almost “nothing” in earnings.
Why AtmOsfear didn’t grab attention back when their countrymen Vanden Plas or Poverty’s No Crime were kicking up dust with their mid-nineties releases is still an enigma today. “Zenith” proves that this is a band cut from the right cloth, one that succeeds big time at pulling in and seducing the more demanding listener with its musical approach.
On “Zenith” the guys have stretched their arrangements out. The result is basically nothing but suites. Mini or maxi. The serving is right there for the taking.. The last one, Spiral Of Pain (a concept piece, split into 4 parts), runs almost half an hour. In return, compared to their last studio album – “Inside The Amtospehere” (2003), six years older – the “metalness” has been dialed back a bit, while the band has come up with an album that boasts the most gripping atmosphere so far. We could call it a third album in their career. And the most mature album of their career. Also polished down to the last detail and fully exploited in terms of expression. Dark to the bone. Properly cataclysmic connotations. With a well-tuned blend of the highest-quality instrumental work that today’s reach of progressive metal demands.
The typical hard riffing known from the German prog metal approach is tucked away in the production. Mostly because of the stretched-out arrangements, which in the mid-paced, calmer passages gain a highly atmospheric vibe, where the keyboards especially stand out, weaving a gloomy sonic curtain in the background. That curtain nicely frames the furious guitar chopping and, in its splendid dialogue, draws the best traits of Evergrey, Pain Of Salvation or Threshold.
The guys of course don’t escape some similarities to Dream Theater, especially in certain transitions. Their epics hold a red thread and a strict focus the whole way through. Despite the long running times they reach, they stay compact and keep a high level of melodic polish in the lead motifs, which don’t split the preachy musical content of this lineup.
The production is dark. Throughout a full, good and (hop-la, hey-ho!) fat 71 minutes. Humanity and planet Earth, as we’ve known it for a good 10,000 years, are disappearing. Faster than predicted. We can feel it every day. The theater plays out right before our eyes. In every segment of human society. Humanity is vanishing for good, and the planet, doomed to an ecological catastrophe, will perhaps regenerate, but the question is how many millions of years it will need for that. We’ve driven it to the end. We’ve driven ourselves to the end. Morally devalued and emotionally crippled, we exploit others in the short term, offer ourselves up to be exploited by others, we are empty souls, with empty faces, empty motives, low deeds. Slaves of a system of doom that we generate ourselves. A virus that will in the end root itself out. Hope lies in the destruction of the human race. Once and for all. The album is black and leads on a journey from which there is no return. And that’s the most attractive side of its expressive dossier. Cataclysm. A mirror of truth? Let yourself be seduced.
The song “Reawakening is a superb instrumental that, in its relentlessly irritable awakening of a black character and its excellent dialogue, as the storytelling demands, through hellish guitar riffing and a colorful palette of motif patterns on the keyboards, sets off an adventure of spontaneity, the kind every true consumer of progressive metal wants. Prog metal that mustn’t slide into the ear on the first go, but rather music that grows with you. Spin after spin. AtmOsfear are true masters, because they create an expression that carries the stamp of recognizability, while you can still label it European prog metal.
Complex but not pretentious, with the instrumentalists showing off the exceptional virtues of their virtuosity ID cards, while at the same time creating a doomy atmosphere that keeps the listener in high tension and doesn’t let them catch their breath for a moment. Crazy Germans, why on earth do you release albums at long cyclical intervals of 6 years?
The half-hour suite is the album’s finest moment. It’s split into 4 parts and the band doesn’t show even for a moment that it has trouble holding a compact focus. The second part, “Joseph’s Theme”, is characterized by the lead melody of the vocal arrangement, which, with just the help of a backing vocalist in the chants, adds mild parallels to the solemn multi-vocal harmonies that Americans Shadow Gallery use in such chants.
The vocals are clean, heartfelt and suit every touch of the accompanying arrangements. They fit AtmOsfear like a glove. With a sharp riff, with a keyboard curtain out front, or armed with backing vocal harmonies. He handles himself well both in the quiet parts, where his power of sensually subtle expression works, and in the parts where the songs spread out dynamically and more aggressively, since with the vocals he keeps the dominant central position.
“Zenith” is an album that will thrill you with an exceptional combination of direct riff sharpness and the unpredictability of its many motif and polyrhythmic turns, which, by creating a doomy and living atmosphere, puts subcutaneous pressure on the listener and (through the course of its 71-minute run) keeps them in a checkmate position of high anticipation the whole way. An album that all progressive metal fans absolutely must check out. It bears some similarities to the bands named in this review, while boldly carving its own path, with the recognizable character of the progressive metal craft .A great album. Flawless. Without a single fault. A victorious artistic departure from the offerings of bands you’ve already heard. Provocative and fresh!
Lineup
Oliver Wulff – vocals
Boris Stepanow – guitar
Stephan Kruse – keyboards
Burkhart Heberle – bass guitar
Tim Schnabel – drums
Production
AtmOsfear & Jens Lueck
Track List
1. Beginning
2. Loss Of Hope
3. Generations
4. Reawakening
5. Scum Of Society
6. Spiral Of Pain
– Fail (pt. I)
– Joseph’s Theme (pt. II)
– Elisa’s Theme (pt. III)
– Fatal Reunion (pt. IV)
