This is what I had to keep reminding myself of while listening to Escape the Clouds latest release Until The End. Prior to Doctor Q giving me the album to review, I wasn’t too familiar with them besides the waltz composed for The Artifice Club's Mechanical Masquerade. So, I kept an open mind while going into it.

 

Unfortunately, I don’t think Until The End and I agreed very much.

 

Now, this does not mean that we completely disagreed. The songs with vocals feature interesting narratives, such as the bombastic opener ‘One Bullet’, the religious anger of ‘The Sins of the Godly’, and the dark revenge story of ‘The Surgeon’s Widow’. The two instrumental tracks of the album, the Middle Eastern influenced ‘Scimitar’ and the very visual and epic ‘Steampunk Dogfight’, are also fantastic and take the listener on just as much of adventure as the vocal songs do. Probably more so. The real winner of this album though is the endlessly sexy ‘Lady in Waiting’, a sapphic love story featuring gorgeous vocals from Unwoman.

 

However, the parts I enjoyed had a tendency to get lost in the parts I didn’t. So much of the instrumentation seems to get lost in the synth that it ends up feeling soulless. Mark Rossmore’s flat speak-sing vocals also do not seem to gel with the epic soundscapes and narratives he’s trying to create. Oftentimes, like on the title track ‘Until the End’, it would take me directly out of the song that I missed the story being told. This alternated between distracting and grating, especially in the moments where the vocals would suddenly become lost in the music like trying to hear someone speak over a loud engine. Though, perhaps that was what Rossmore was going for...

 

As Doctor Q said in his and Emilie Bush’s review of Escape The Clouds previous album Circumnavigator, fans of Vernian Process and the “Steamwave” subgenre will probably enjoy this album greatly. Sadly, I am afraid I am not one of those fans. While there were several elements of the album I enjoyed such as the narratives and the instrumentals, there just was not enough of it for me to completely immerse myself into the world of Until The End.

 

As I said before though, it is all a matter of subjectivity. Until The End might not be my taste, but perhaps it is yours. The album is streaming for free from the Escape the Clouds website. Feel free to listen and judge for yourself.

 

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