Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The concept album is one that never seems to lose its power to enthral and entertain, yet it does find itself in a position that in modern times is lost to audiences who seek the immediate rather than the tradition of the slow reveal. It may only be experience which stops Lore from taking a more direct, physical aspect on today’s times, but there is also the element of the fantastical, the extraordinary and the epic that many now dismiss as being irrelevant, as being unconnected to the era of what seems to have thrust upon us via austerity and being neglected.
To look the epic in the face and be comfortable in its presence says a lot for the one viewing the art form, after all to dismiss the issue is to suggest that we can only live in the immediate, that the conceit of life is only worth pursuing if it is one shrouded in a quick fix, a short story reduced to a three line stanza.
The sense of the gothic dark melody is not confined to literature or the aged bleakness of standing in the shadow of religion, it can appear in music and for Dispel, the imagery surrounding the return of a knight from the crusades, the feeling of magic that infuses the sense and the consequence of relationships under strain is enough to pull the listener into a realm where they can see that the epic is to be lauded, to be discussed, for from where else do we get the story from.
Dispel’s album Lore sits in that fashion with ease, and while it is a nice problem to have to see the album as a whole rather than sift through individual, unrelated songs, as if you were told to appreciate a line in a chapter rather than the whole novel, it could be argued that moments such as Model Consequence, Hero’s Revelation, Gift Of The Goddess, Temptation and the finale of The Depth Of Transformation bring the album together, make the darkness of the tale burn brightly and add a cautionary note to the listener to which other albums of its class and genre find ways to reject.
A principled album, Dispel understands that on occasion one must present the story as whole rather dip into the segment offered by fearless lines and out of context chapters; this is where Lore opens up to legend and myth, one where we can learn to expand our boundaries without feeling out of place.
Dispel release their new album Lore on January 10th.
Ian D. Hall