Fossil Eyes
More reviews to come shortly
September 2008 | Sea of Tranquility
Reviewed by Peter Pardo
You never quite know what you're going to get with Phiadelphia's The Red Masque. This band loves to throw curveball after curveball at the listener with each release, drawing upon influences that cover the gamut of progressive rock, gothic, psychedelic, classic rock, and avant-garde styles. Their latest Fossil Eyes, and first for ReR/Ad Hoc Records, is no exception.
Opening track "The Spider is the Web" kicks things off in spectacular fashion, a beefy, almost 'metal' tinged rocker that is like a head on collision between Van Der Graaf Generator, Magma, and Isis, Brandon Lord Ross' humongous bass lines driving the arrangement while the slithery, crawling guitar licks from Andrew Kowal add that psychedelic edge. Lead singer Lynnette Shelley adds in her ominous vocals on the creepy "Carbon 14", another aggressive number with rumbling bass and crunchy guitars, with the tricky stick work of drummer Vonorn providing plenty of jazzy underpinnings to this otherwise heavy and foreboding track. After the haunting & brief instrumental "Gliese", the band comes back with "Das Snail", a chaotic slice of avant-garde mayhem, dissonant guitars slashing across the mix above crashing drum work from Vonorn, Shelley painting the landscape with her intoxicating storytelling, much like a female Jim Morrison. On this one, the band is quite effective jumping from soft interludes to loud chaos. Another short instrumental, the spacey "The Worm", bridges the gap to "Carbon 13", a perfect soundtrack to your worst nightmare, complete with distorted bass lines, squawking guitars, noisy drums blasts, and Shelley's maniacal rantings. There's a certain King Crimson meets Jefferson Airplane meets Captain Beefheart feel to this one, making it quite an intriguing listening experience. After a couple of shorter, effects laden pieces, the band tears into "Polyphemus", a track littered with bulbuous bass, lots of wild effects created by keyboards, theremin, and guitars, and Lynnette's mysterious vocals. After the downright spooky "Metamorphosis", the epic finale "The Anti-Man (Not Afraid)" crashes out of the gate in almost doom metal fashion, Shelley's vocals almost defiant against heavy guitar & bass riffs and Vonorn's thunderous drum barrage. Lots of twisting and weaving instrumentation on this one, a heavy prog lovers dream, and easily one of the strongest songs to date from The Red Masque discography.
Lyrically, this is some pretty intense and dense stuff, and makes for interesting reading as you are listening to the demanding music that the band has created here (full lyrics are included). Nice job on the overall production by Vonorn, making Fossil Eyes a very bombastic sounding CD at times, yet dark and ominous when needed during the quieter moments. Due to the heavier nature of some of these songs, I can see Fossil Eyes appealing to the non-prog crowd as well, which should be a good thing as this band has been paying their dues for a few years now and seem like they are ready to be accepted by a larger audience willing to give their unique style a listen.
4 1/2 stars out of 5
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September 2008 | KFJC, 89.7 FM, Los Altos, California
Reviewed by humana
Avant Rock/Psychedelic: This is plain weird and therefore great. Hailing from Philadelphia and featuring boss bass and electric guitar by Vonorn [edit, bass by Brandon Ross, guitars by Vonorn and Andrew Kowal] and rich vocals from Lynnette Shelley, Red Masque offers a unique array of tracks with ultra-cool and creepy lyrics touching on themes such as Polyphemus moths, spiders, snails, and carbon’s role in dating fossils. The music here is intense, varied, and ranging from folk to Old World accordion to horror soundscapes to all-out brilliant rockouts with psyche guitar solos. This will appeal to many. Bravo! Picks: 2, 9, 11, 1. PGM: Almost all songs end around :02.
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September 2008 | Philadelphia City Paper
by A.D. Amorosi
...the dynamic prog-manic Red Masque, whose new CD Fossil Eyes is like cramming 1,000 King Crimson bootlegs into one mystical intriguing whole.
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August 2008 | SquidCo.
Marrying chamber rock prowess with heavy crimson-cow-esque drama and power, The Red Masque create a complex journey through 11 songs. The band is technically impressive and studio savvy, as it shows through the use of effects, sudden but sensical transitions, and just plain interesting and well crafted songs. Lynnette Shelley's vocals are authoritative, though make take a bit to get used to: she's powerful and articulate, with an accent that would work well for both Lydia Lunch and on a Zappa doo-wop. Red Masque is, no doubt, thick, heavy rock, in a similar vein to Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, but without that band's uniquely twisted sense of humor. This is serious stuff, with a resolute focus on the music itself. And that makes for a release that rewards and reveals itself more with each listen.
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August 2008 | Wayside Music
Fourth album for this band. They manage to sound rough-hewn in an attractive way, while executing some pretty interesting/complex musical maneuvers in a way similar to The Work, although they don't sound like them. I found parts of this reminiscent of Art Bears, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Maudlin of the Well among others, but they never actually sound like any of these bands either.
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June 2008 | Prog Archives
by Assaf Vestin
The Red Masque – the name alone conjures up in my mind images of mystery tales and horror stories a-la Edgar Alan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. The foursome that makes up The Red Masque fills my imaginary world with sounds that fit these very well with their dark, heavy, thumping and bizarre sound world. With two albums (which I love) and one EP to their record they continue their musical path with this new offering entitled Fossil Eyes. This time around, there are more songs than on Feathers For Flesh and those are shorter, but no less effective or impressive. In fact, one might listen to this as a one continuous song separated into several shorter parts as the mood and sounds persist throughout this release and due to the natural sense of flow that links the songs very well together. Zeuhlish bass, nightmarish throbbing sound (in a good way!), desperate evocative cries, heavy guitar riffs; these are still here and even more emphasized than before.
The first song (and not only it) continues the sound found in the opening of House Of Ash which opened Feathers For Flesh. That tormented sound that makes me feel someone has unlocked the door to hell and all the cries of the damned souls are coming through the open gates. The guitar sounds a lot heavier this time around, almost metal-ic at times. Indeed, the overall atmosphere is very “heavy” and dense. I feel overwhelmed after listening to this as if I’ve overdosed with music; highly intense. It feels to me as if walls of sounds are closing in on me from all sides and I’m in the middle unable to escape them. It reminds me somewhat of the listening experience I have with Tool (it doesn’t sound like them; I just want to point out the effect the music has on me). This style continues in songs like Carbon 14 and Das Snail. The heavy and distorted feel, the bewitching vocals and the eerie mood all create a special ambiance that is found in albums like Guapo’s Five Suns and others of their ilk and add to that a vocalist such as Diamanda Galas and you get an idea of what to expect. To touch on that issue, let me say only that I am at awe with the voice Lynnette possesses. It matches the power of all the other instruments (also thanks to the mixing, but still).
What I respect and like about The Red Masque is that they seem to have created this particular and recognizable sound that while one can (think they) spot their influences and also identify similar bands, it is very much their own. This seemingly chaotic frenzy and anguish; topped with haunting zeuhlish- sounding bass and all-over the place drumming. Twisted would be another word I would use to describe the atmosphere they create. By that I mean, twisted as in a weird horror story where sense and logic are lost and the unnatural world has taken over. The opening song alone gives me this impression with its bone chilling and even “perverse” atmosphere that can easily fit as the soundtrack to an H.P. Lovecraft story (the name will come again here). This, mixed with occasional sense of despair, oozes from most of the songs here. Anger and anguish intertwined. The album also features shorter tracks (1-2 minutes long) which purpose it is (I guess) to create a proper ambience surrounding the songs and creating a connecting and leading thread from one song to the next.
One of the most experimental and bizarre tracks here is The Hive which makes a brilliant use of electronic effects to create exactly what the title suggests; A gorgeous or nightmarish soundscape (depends on how you look at it) which sonically sounds like you’re surrounded with a million electronic bees.
Polyphemus is bewitching. It is an eerie song (keeping up with the rest of the bunch), one that can fit very well into some horror movies (again, not different from the others). A brilliant track, with twists and wonderful playing; Lynnette’s voice appears every now and then, broken down. The middle of the track sees its change to a different pace and mood and also has now Lynnette singing without being cut out but with over-dubs. This is a fabulous track, a great exercise in how to create sonic terror (meant in a good way).
The last song, The Anti-Man, mixes the two prominent characteristics here, those being heaviness (displayed by the heavy guitar riffing and powerful drum performance) and the eeriness (which is the result of the overall sound and song structure as well). It is the only song here that gets near the epic length of past albums tracks. Despite its length it was quite accessible to my ears and soon (-er than the other tracks) became a favourite track here. It ends with a feel of desperation and closure very well executed by the whole band, particularly by the solo guitar going almost berserk.
After all this I must also address what are (possible) flaws in this album. Two possible downsides in this release for some listeners can be that 1) it might be too much intensity at the expense of melody and 2) that it may be hard to distinguish between the different tracks (relating to what I noted at the start of this review). It is “brutal”, which is fine with me and I like it a lot, but some may feel that what characterized their two previous releases is lacking a bit here; that is their wonderful crafting of odd and special melodies. Not to say these are non-existing here but it drowns in the “sea” of intensity, the massive sound of the instruments that seem to overshadow everything else. This is why this album deserves the full attention of the listener and repeated listening. It may be a bit too much to listen to at times (and certainly while in the proper mood) and therefore a feeling that there’s a lack of diversity here may creep through. But one needs to look at this album as a sort of concept album or at least a consider there’s a sound- concept here, which is why there’s a dominancy of this tone throughout the album. For those who know and like the band and for those who like the styles and bands referenced in this review, I easily recommend this album. It is creating out-worldly sounds and conjures up some disturbing and weird images when listening. It is a fantastic listening experience which I will return to listen to (like their previous albums). One more thing, there’s superb performance by all the band members, wonderful playing which makes this even more pleasurable to listen to.