Album Reviews
Building an Empire | Demians
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I was a little torn about Demians after my first full listen. Their debut album has some incredible dynamics both in volume and mood, and it’s packed full of quality musicianship. There were, however, times when I thought it was either too mello and/or catchy. Honestly, I was thoroughly confused enough to develop just the right amount of curiosity to listen to the album another three times… consecutively. It got better with each succession.
I had the goal of finishing the 2nd revision of my master’s project this morning. Unforunately, I purchased Building an Empire (2008). I had this grand idea of having this album play in the background while I finished making some wonderful figures of Gaussian distributions. My brain got ahead of itself and realized, “No Dan. This music is too good for you to focus on anything else right now. By the way, no one cares about Gaussian distributions.” It turns out that I’m 95% certain my brain was right. This freshman effort from Demians simply had too many unexpected detours for a first time listener to actually focus on work… and certainly not on the boring world of probability density functions. My project paper didn’t have a chance.
I found Demians because it turns out there’s been an underlying trend among some of our posts. I’m not sure if Mike and Nirav have noticed, but there’s a common record label among Riverside and Dead Soul Tribe. This particular label also supports other bands such as Asia, Platypus, The String Cheese Incident, Symphony X, and Transatlantic (among many others). Since I liked Riverside and Dead Soul Tribe so much, it got my curiosity going enough see who else was on InsideOut. I didn’t have the patience to check out every band, but by pure luck, I happned to find Demians. The mp3 samples on the label’s site didn’t really do it justice. Luckily Demians had a MySpace page with a few full length tracks. Between hearing these samples and Steven Wilson’s (Porcupine Tree) endorsement saying that, “One of the most assured and accomplished debut albums I’ve ever heard, the textures and dynamics within the music are breathtaking. A must for everyone that appreciates the art of epic and ambitious 21st century rock music,” how could l NOT buy this album? And actually, the three tracks on the MySpace page aren’t entirely indicative of the album. So hopefully the audio sample on this post will make up where I think the MySpace tracks lack.
Building an Empire has some mild similarities between Porcupine Tree and Dead Soul Tribe, but I’m not sure I’d really use either of those bands to convey an idea of what Demians sounds like. The similarities I’ve noticed are more about the writing styles and brilliant uses of dynamics. As a whole, this album is pretty mello, but it definitely has its heavy moments. For those of you like Nirav, rest assure there’s no screaming. That’s right, soft and melodic vocals all the way through, and he’s actually a pretty decent singer. None of the other instruments really stick out to me because they’re all good and cohesive. Keep in mind I have a pretty critical ear too. So, simply having nothing bad to say is a pretty good compliment. However, it’s that cohesiveness, supplemented by the countless layers in these compositions, that really makes this a phenomenal album. I honestly was not willing to call this a phenomenal album until I had listened to it a few times. On the surface, it was tempting to brush it off as just some other new rock band. But as I said earlier, it left just the right amount of curiosity to keep me coming back. In fact, I’ve listened to this album in entirety six times within my first 24 hours of purchase. I haven’t been this engulfed and mesmerized by a debut album in far, far too long.
This freshman effort is only 8 tracks, but is nearly an hour long. Nicolas Chapel was audacious enough to have the opening track over 9 minutes and the final track over 16 minutes. Along with hearing the album in entirety, I’d say it’s pretty clear he writes songs, first and foremost, for himself. I really look forward to subsequent releases from Demians. I suppose I’m also partial to the fact that this album was written and recorded by one person (something I aspire to do)… by the way, who knew the French could rock out?
Related Posts: Riverside | Porcupine Tree | Dead Soul Tribe
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