Telepathy – Transmissions
Release Date: 28th March 2025
Label: Pelagic Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Avant-Garde Post-Metal, Progressive Metal.
FFO: Sólstafir, Show Me The Dinosaur, Pelican.
Review By: Ross Bowie
5 years on from their last album, Telepathy are back with their atmospheric, movie score infused post-metal. The band described the writing process as “a culmination of four years of introspection, experimentation and revitalisation” While being an instrumental album the band manage to paint vivid pictures of the past, present and future through their expansive soundscapes.
One of Transmission’s biggest influences was the band finding faded photographs in the home of the three brothers as well as an audio recording of statesman Józef Piłsudski, who is often regarded as the founder of modern Poland. The melding of these aspects, against the band’s enthusiasm, create some beautiful moments across the album’s 58-minute run time.
Despite the album being an expansive piece of work, the first track, Oath, was somehow churned out in a single day. The track wastes no time with the heaviness as you’re dropped straight into a big chunky riff before the leads start to add some texture and let that shoegaze element slowly steep its way in, transforming the once straightforward forward riff into something completely different. Telepathy also uses the opener to recreate sections of the Pilsudski recording, which add a layer of passion and optimism to the song.
The band is able to balance their different themes with ease as an acoustic section will have you feeling all nostalgic and fuzzy before a layer of synths has you thinking about the solar system and the capabilities of the future. Augury balances these two themes well. The balance of heaviness against the soft keys and synths all while being intercut with an audio broadcast which never settles in one place makes for an exciting listen and stops Transmissions being another instrumental album that can just play in the background without much thought or attention.
End Transmission is the album’s highlight, coming in as the second last song, and should really be the album’s closer as it hits everything that Telepathy set out to do in one track. The song immediately grabs your interest with one of the album’s heavier lead riffs before deploying the synths as a futuristic tool before the guitar smashes you over the head with some black-gaze style lead work. The track is constantly picking up steam before breaking into a beautiful piano section, the melody isn’t complicated, and the chord progression is easy to follow, but it makes it that much more effective. The use of audio tapes here is masterful as it feels like the reward at the end of all the songs’ hard work.
Transmissions is a vivid album that really paints pictures in your minds eyes if you’re willing to sit back and let it take over, the themes of time being balanced against the albums use of beauty and tension is excellent and makes it very easy to get lost in, the band have previously done some big tours supporting some elder statesmen of the scene and on Transmissions they will be capturing even more fans across the globe.
(4 / 5)
