Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
There is almost nothing better than when it comes to the Progressive art than finding any of the stalwarts of post punk determination to rid the cycle of the lengthy song on absolute and blinding top form. When it happens, when it gives the all and the everything into which the imagination can run wild and the cosmos can end and begin in a single blink of an eye and no one would notice, that’s when the all has been given and the shaking of trepidation is but a Post It note.
Top form, it may be subjective but to hear Spock’s Beard latest offering is to wrestle with genius and never mind admitting that you’re only second best, it is the nature of all things that even in the smallest atom lives greatness; a greatness that can bring light where there is despair and destruction that can kill a species in minutes, such is the power of The Oblivion Particle.
Oblivion maybe on offer in others but the void is steered clear completely when it comes to the new set of songs, if anything it offers a kind of redemption, a foray into the realm of the unconscious desire and awareness that something magical is happening around you and it spurred on by art.
The Oblivion Particle is that moment, it is the snap of the fingers in the best Film Noir, the moment in which a cinema full of a thousand people laugh at the same joke or shed a collective tear, it is the appreciation into which hard work gets the nod of approval and the grasp of the familiar when having been lost becomes apparent, it is not oblivion, it is perception and one that carries all the songs on the album forward.
Whilst there is not a single bad moment in which to discern, even the cover of Black Sabbath’s Iron Man is pretty cool and deserves attentive pleasure, there are minutes that spread beyond time and offer such clarity that it sparkles against the brightest of polished glass. Tracks such as Hell’s Not Enough, the truly awesome spectacle of Bennett Built A Time Machine and Get Out While You Can all give so much in a short space of Time that the listener will feel a pang of regret for feeling so greedy in devouring all that Spock’s Beard lay before them in one go.
The Oblivion Particle offers no division or element of frustration, it doesn’t even fragment under the immense scrutiny like some of the previous albums; instead it just suggests that knowledge, willingness to listen and understanding should be grasped at all costs. One of the best albums of the year.
Ian D. Hall