Track Listing

1. Last Day of Winter
2. Autumn into Summer
3. March to the Sea
4. Red Ran Amber
5. Aurora Borealis
6. Sirius

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #85888 in Music
• Brand: Pelican
• Released on: 2005-07-26
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Album Description
With their newest epic, Pelican bring on new levels of complexities to their already distinctive auditory stamp. Acoustic guitars take their place beside the group's traditional (read: highly amplified) power-droning and awe-inspiring instrumental anthems. Whether this signals the end of the underground musical landscape as we know it, or the beginning of a new one is anyone's guess. Luckily, it rules either way. They've toured with Low, Tortoise, Isis, Mono, Cave In, Daughters, The Bronx, A.R.E., Weapons, US Maple, and more.

Alternative Press
"(Pelican) are doing for metal what Copernicus did for astronomy"

Magnet
"Both beautiful and awe-inspiring"

Customer Reviews

I Don't Know How This Could Be Anything BUT 5 Star Material
This. Is. Amazing.

Anyone even the least bit into music can appreciate this simply amazing album. There are no vocals, only instruments that carry the listener across waves and waves of beautiful sound. This is my first Pelican CD, before this i never took much notice of them or their name..but after hearing the hype for this album and reading how great it was and that it's (and the band is) similar to bands like Neurosis, Isis, Cult of Luna..i thought i just had to get it to really understand what people were talking about.

The tracks on this album are nothing short of awesome. All of them, at least to me, conjur up a sort of emotion..be that sadness, a sense of determination and even reflection on anything. It's a CD you could listen to while overlooking the ocean from a great view, for example. It's that beautiful and melodic. The song "March to the Sea", was originally 20 minutes long on their "March to the Sea" E.P that came out just before this album..unfortunately, (And it's probably the ONLY downside to this album) it's cut down to around 10 minutes here.

I think for most people hearing this, it'll take a couple of listens to fully grasp what's going on. It did for me, at least. This album should not be missed by any fan of Pelican, or by anyone who is into instrumentalism. Pelican are extremely talented, and deserve alot of respect. This album is absolutely 5/5.

Do You Like NEW Rock? Buy This.
More like four-and-a-half stars

This album is blissful metal from second one to second last. There are two things that hold this back from a five, both of much-less-than-catastrophic import: 1) The drummer and bass serve as back-up to the brilliant guitar interplay of Laurent Lebec and Trevor de Brauw, serving to make them something of an afterthought (still, certainly not the only excellent band to operate on such a template); 2) Nothing quite manages to approach the invigorating breath of Odin to the synapses that is "March to the Sea," which is a career-defining opus by any honest critic's account.

And really, I adore the rest of this album. The album starts out bristling with "Last Day of Winter," a refreshing blend of doom chords, serious guitar harmonizing, and melodic (!!!) feedback. Every song on this album is quite strong. Little can prepare a listener for "March to the Sea," even after the cajillionth listen. It starts out dirgey, perhaps the best instrumental approximation of Nordic hordes marching to battle where the fjord meets the ocean I can envision in my ear. And then it continually morphs into something else and something else and something else. Really, in the end it might be a good thing that the drums and bass lay back a little. It's not as if drummer Larry Herweg comes close to resembling any sort of slouch. Around the seven minute mark of "March" he does some very evocative cymbal work, making them sound as if they are being played backwards, though they are not. This isn't the kind of rock where everyone shows off at once. Indeed, nobody really ever shows off at all (the album has no true solos). It is all an ambient adventure. Done with the instrumentation of a traditional metal band. Sounding not in the least traditional. Indeed, sounding quite radical.

By the end of "March to the Sea," everything rushes into an absolutely unpredictable and thoroughly musical frenzy. As opposed to other bands who rock out "without structure," these guys certainly know what they are doing. E.g., some other reviewer here compared them to Metallica. Metallica can't do free form noise with anything resembling this kind of proficiency. Listen to any live Metallica song with "free form" sections and you will hear what I mean. They sound like people randomly hitting different parts of their instruments. Pelican very conscientiously deconstruct metal and rock, making it sound beautiful, uplifting, and menacing as they do it.

This is simply a stunning record on many important levels. If you want rock that suggests so many things at once that you can barely handle it, this is the album for you.

a beautiful soundscape
From thundering avalanches of sound to soft, glistening melodies, Pelican's 'The fire in our throats will beckon the thaw' is a perfect, and very dynamic album.

Sure this is not as 'heavy' as previous releases.. but heavy is definately not what Pelican is all about. Pelican is about soundscapes.. and the soundscape painted with this release is a of grandoise scale. It seems to capture the ocean-like swelling sounds of newer Isis, but is less repetative and more entertaining.. even without vocals. Yes the repetition is still there, (as always will be with 'soundscapes') but there is more 'variety' to the repetition if you will. I know that doesnt make a whole lot of sense, but you have to listen to this masterpeice in order to understand. This is not only a very atmospheric piece, but it is also very cleverly crafted in the sense that nothing sounds out of place, overdone or overly accented.

An entrancing journey to say the least.