Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The concept album is a treasure trove of thought that requires an intelligence and imagination that can arguably come from being completely engaged with the subject, from being open to treating music as you would an epic piece of theatre of a three-hour film, with absolute conviction and a faithful application and observance to concentration.
Sweden’s Metalite return with a sound that are grounded in the reality of the impression that a concept album is rarely anything other than imposing and exciting, the depth of the story that unfolds as if watching the finest of plays on stage. To feel the expanse of music and the experience of the tale is to envisage Hamlet being presented to the first audiences of Elizabethan England, or even having the presence of mind to throw life into a kit bag and explore beyond your comfort zone along a raging rover that stretches to infinity.
Expedition One is one of the genre’s modern greats, an act of translation from mind to open engagement, and as the boldness of the piece progresses, so the understanding of our mutual future, one perhaps worse than we have been expecting, is presented in such a way that you can help but feel the pulse asking, imploring the listener to take heed and stay alive.
For Erica Ohlsson, Edwin Premberg, Robert Örnesved, Lea Larsson and Robert Majd, the songs hit the sweet spot of the tantalising premise at hand from the moment that the guitars, vocals, bass, and drums arrive in a pattern only to be described as policy of robust punches designed to leave bruises an black eyes on the usual naysayers that decry the freedom of thought.
Across a set of songs that engross and occupy the mind like chapters in a gripping novel, including Aurora, the thrilling Cyberdome, New Generation, Blazing Skies, and Paradise, the theme of this crucial addition to the overall quality of the concept brigade is one that requires the mind to actively participate with, to understand and fight back against what could be as we become invisible to the system, as we ourselves become the transparent ones with little depth and meaning.
An absorbing release, one of the best in quite some time to leave its presence in the soul of the listener, and one that does justice to the realm of Scandinavian rock.
Metalite release Expedition One on January 19th via AFM Records.