Vinyl Review

Black Sails for Red Seas – Chasing Giants

Who needs a singer anyway? Like seriously? Always hogging all the attention, acting like they're in charge, running around on stage making a scene, trying to sleep with all your fans, what good are they? Of course; I kid, a good vocalist can be key to a bands sound, but these guys have decided to do away with the idea all together.

Black Sails for Red Seas (BSRS) is a post-rock/instrumental metal group from Montreal, QC. I discovered this band at the record store while looking for some good post-rock, I had just been looking through the selection of Pelican records (an awesome instrumental band), unable to find what I was wanting, when I spotted this album on the featured rack. The sticker on it proclaiming it ideal for fans of Explosions in the Sky, Russian Circles, and, as it happens, Pelican. That was enough to convince me, and they're a Canadian band so all the more reason to pick it up and give them some support.

Their placement in the Metal section of the store led me to believe they would be reasonably heavy, and that proved to be correct. BSRS is considerably heavier than your average post-rock band, definitely dipping into the post-metal genre. The album starts off nice and heavy, opening with a strong riff on the first track, before relaxing just a bit for the end of that song and the entirety of the next one. These more chilled parts of the album really embrace the post-rock elements they are harnessing, with classic tremolo picked, gliding guitar riffs (which also appear in the final song with a slightly different feel). Even these bits are decently heavy, but less driving. There are not a lot of truly quieter moments on the record, but while they are short and infrequent they play their parts well enough, proving a breath between the denser parts.

The final song on the first side builds in heaviness until the back half of the song when a particularly gnarly, chunky riff takes the reins for the remainder. A nice long section where the various band members work off of that core riff providing nice little bits of flavour and texture throughout. Even when those additions overtake the main riff for brief moments the gait it provides remains felt and holds strong.

Side B of the record has a less bombastic opening, and builds in intensity slowly over the course of the first two songs on this side. Then it goes all in for a very heavy finish. The final song of the album is the heaviest song on here with some nearly black metal-like segments of blast beats and and our good friend; tremolo picked guitars. These heavy parts are interspersed with some more ethereal passages that would make Deafheaven proud. This last song is also apparently a song that appeared on a previous EP they released, this version was recorded live at legendary recording studio Studio Victor in Montreal, and was the last rock song to ever be recorded there before it was closed down for good, according to the band.

While I enjoy this album a lot and the skill of these musicians is clearly apparent, of course nothing is perfect. To my ears many of the less intense, less riff-driven sections have something of a noise problem, and not in a “utilizing noise rock elements” kind of way, just in a noisy kind of way. I think maybe the overdriven guitars and/or the bass guitar are stepping into each others territory a bit too much, creating something of a dissonant drone as a backdrop to the more relaxed parts of the album that muffles the nuance of what is going on. However, the drummer seems to be working in some strange and oddball fills during these times as well, which are not always great but are always interesting.

So the mixing seems a bit weird to me, but not so off that it seems wrong or like a mistake, it is very possible that this is entirely intentional and exactly how they want it to sound. This has some interesting effects on the music. The rhythm sections often seem louder than the leads, which is odd but can be cool with passages of haunting lead guitar just barely peeking up over the blanket of distortion created by the rhythm guitar and bass. Though there is a bit in the middle of side B where it feels like it could be something of a bass feature, but it is so buried that I can't even be sure that's what's happening, there is just this impression that the bass is the only instrument not doing what everyone else is doing. Maybe it's all in my head, and I'm just hearing what I would do in that situation. This would be weird anyway as generally the bass does not seem buried, even in more chaotic portions of the recording.

The best parts of this record for me are when a strong riff takes control for a good long time and the band works from that to create a passage that feels like it is evolving and shifting, but still grounded to a stable base. This album is pretty much what one might expect from a modern post-rock/metal outfit, but they do enough in my opinion to differentiate themselves from the crowd of Explosions in the Sky clones with a noticeably heavier sound.

Recommended for:

Post-rock fans

Metal heads who need to chill out

People looking for some new underground rock

The Vinyl

This is a very basic vinyl release but it is a very good quality. The cover is simple, no gatefold, made of reasonably good quality material. The record is a nice medium-heavy weight black vinyl in a simple, but again nice quality, white paper sleeve with a plastic lining. The record comes in and out of the sleeve nicely and they then go into the cover with no fussing. There is no insert, song list and credits are simply on the back of the cover. Nowhere on the record or the cover does it mention the rpm for the album, but since it's the usual 33, I think that can be forgiven.

Size: 12”

Speed: 33 RPM

Colour: Black

Weight: Medium-heavy

Labels: Return to Analog Records, Deathbound Records

Limited to 500 copies, this is number 039

Good sound quality