- Country: Australia
- Style: Progressive metal / Extreme metal
- Label: Season of Mist
- Release date: 7 November 2014
Three songs, forty-eight minutes, and a violin carrying half the melodies. On paper Citadel sounds like a prog nerd’s fever dream. In practice it is the most exciting extreme metal record I heard all year.
“Painters of the Tempest” takes up nearly half the running time and is split into three movements. The middle part, “Triptych Lux”, is the heart of the album: Tim Charles’ violin soars over black metal blasting, Xenoyr’s rasp tears through the gaps, then everything drops away into flamenco-tinged acoustic guitar before building back up. It should be a mess. It isn’t, because every shift feels earned.
“Pyrrhic” is the shortest piece and the most direct, ten minutes of controlled violence with a clean chorus that sticks. “Devour Me, Colossus” closes things in two parts, the first a wall of blast beats, the second a slow, sad fade of strings and cello. Jens Bogren mixed and mastered it, and the bass – often lost on records like this – actually sits up front where you can hear Cygnus doing something interesting.
Some will find Charles’ clean vocals too theatrical, and the album demands full attention. Give it that and it pays back tenfold. A deserved top-50 ARIA chart entry, too.
Best tracks:
Painters of the Tempest (Part II): Triptych Lux
Pyrrhic
Devour Me, Colossus (Part I): Blackholes
Author’s rating: 8.9/10
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