Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Many are drawn to the music created by Progressive Rock bands because it boldly expands on the narrative that comes with life; the pop song has its place with its repeated chorus and catchy delivery and momentary diversion, and even rock itself plays a part in musical appreciation However, the art of the Progressive movement is in its ability to weave with patience a world in which fiction expands far beyond the short structure and deliver an insight into the human ability to bring forth a lengthy discourse of virtuosity and beauty to the lives of the everyday and the people caught by the chronicles and storylines conceived.

On the back of their hugely impressive self-titled debut album, Norwegian Progressive band Sykofant immediately set out their continuing wares in the three-song E.P., Red Sun, and bring a dynamic of instant revolution and resolution to their sound.

The three tracks, Ashes, the E.P. title track of Red Sun, and Embers, stir the pot with intent of approaching the imagination with caution, aware that an E.P. might not find the gravitas that some insist is an absolute to the genre, and yet doing so with a fevered and dogged cool that prevents the naysayer from having their day, or their inflated egos from being stoked.

This E.P. casts its eyes on our surrounding Cosmos, the feeling of the origins of thought whisper to the listener with gratitude and meaning. The secrets and intricate bonds that tie us to the sense of the infinite possibility that the Progressive provides. The first of two interconnected pieces, Red Sun is a powerful sense of conceptual art, layering arrangement and complex, expressive sounds with determined ease.

Sykofant’s Emil Moen, Melvin Treider, and Per Sumb, bring the Nordic style of storytelling to the fore in Red Sun, and it is a creation of sound that hits deep into the soul.

Ian D. Hall