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Angel
Eyes is a Chicago quintet who have been quietly laboring
quite hard for the last six or seven years. I know that
because they have been on a constant schedule of
releases over the last five years. I apologize for my
neglect of reviewing …And For a Roof A Sky Full of Stars
before but better late than never, I guess. Like the
music of this combo, sometimes I move slowly, and I
sometimes move so slow that I am barely noticed.
…And For a
Roof a Sky Full of Stars was actually released back in 2007.
This EP is comprised of two pretty lengthy songs combined
clocking close to twenty-seven minutes of music. As they are
classified in Metal Archives the most fitting genre for Angel
Eyes is the vague but accurate ‘atmospheric sludge’. The songs
are simply titled “One” and “Two” respectively and are so
similar in mood and structure that they could be
interchangeable.
The music of
Angel Eyes definitely demands patience to get through and quite
a bit of attention to actually enjoy it. Both songs on the EP
evolve similarly; slowly but methodically expanding into a muddy
crescendo. Self-admittedly post rock bands have been making
music like this for a while now and the catch is this; play this
in the background and it sounds quite generic, proper background
noise. Pay close attention and only then we’re talking.
Their latest
work Midwestern follows a 2009 split with a German band called A
Fine Boat, That Coffin! (how about that for a stupid name?) and
after three years you’d expect a change or an improvement,
right? Well there has been a change and yeah, an improvement
too. Their new music is not as mundane as before. To start
with Midwestern doesn’t tread so much in slow crescendos,
instead now this quintet goes for an equally expansive range but
are far more poignant with the moods they express.
Angel Eyes
are still working under the modicum of titling their tunes after
their order in their respective releases. So first track “One”
alone is more expressive than the whole of …And for a Roof a Sky
Full of Stars. Good for us, it doesn’t take them eight minutes
to bring their noise to a boil. The song goes heavy and
thundering almost from the start with a beat that is actually
speed metal compared to the tunes contained in the EP reviewed
above. Also, there seems to have been the intent of making
Midwestern a more fluid listen as the songs segue into each
other seamlessly.
Absolutely
adorable is the bass tone on “Two”. In this song, you can hear
details that in 2007 were undoable. The dynamics have shifted
greatly and if there ever was something generic about them now
that’s all gone. The mud and the sludge remain but the balance
between that and lighter less somber tones now dominates.
Before, Angel Eyes played in black and white, now they are in
3-D Technicolor. They haven’t betrayed their vision. Their music
sounds as ambitious as before, it just seems that in Midwestern
they have finally found their own voice.
Official Site
MySpace
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