Mountain Caller - Chronicle II: Hypergenesis

Mountain Caller – Chronicle II: Hypergenesis
Release Date: 26th January 2024
Label: Church Road Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Instrumental, Post-Rock, Prog, Psychedelic.
FFO: Russian Circles, Elder, Bossk, Pelican, Ohhms, Ritual King.
Review By: Kay Morgun

Well, the buzz has been building around this band for ages. Church Road have been teasing its release since last year, and touring with Urne in the latter half of last year has seen them exposed to new audiences. Picking up The Archivist via Church Road pre-order, I have been waiting to see if the whole album is as good as I thought it would be.

And it is. Every single song is an absolute pearler, from the opening track Daybreak with its gentle opening that descends into a journey of their own making, it is chock-full of quality with some metal-edged riffs that other bands would love to call their own. My early favourite, The Archivist which made its way onto my commute playlist, still sounds fresh with a bold and urgent direction that builds upon the musical themes of Daybreak and somehow improves upon it. Each song has been crafted and refined so they come in and lead you on a path until it ends, but at no point does it drag. Nor does it suffer from repetition or reliving past ideas. The inclusion of vocals on Dead Language are delivered well (apologies, I couldn’t find out who sang – Dave, can you check?) and don’t feel out of place, but I have to say I prefer them to sing with their instruments.

Each of the constituent parts are playing out of their skin, Claire, wringing riff after riff and finding great moments of balance, of when to play soft and when to bring the heavy in to El, whose bass work is just top-notch and manages to exploit the space left by Claire to place a massive stamp on things. Keeping everything together is Max – the drumming is just perfect.

I had so much fun reviewing this, because they have put so much into it and from the moment you press play you fall into a zone with them. I mentioned before that this feels as though you are embarking on a journey with them as your tour guides with each track acting as a stopover point in a story that is yet to be written and there are no downsides to the music, they have given us. It has everything you could ever really want, and I suppose that with it being primarily an instrumental album (vocals on Dead Language aside) that could possibly put some people off, but this isn’t like the overblown ‘epics’ that drag a singular idea out and bores you to death. They know how to write, how to arrange and have dropped a classic album. Excellent, just excellent stuff!!