Asylum Pyre - Fifty Years Later
CD Info
2012
Massacre Records / Germany
10 Tracks
English Lyrics
Fifty Years Later is my first foray into the world of France's Asylum Pyre, and this album is their second, following up their 2009 debut, Natural Instinct. With a strong environmental message, Fifty Years Later is both a searing indictment of humanity and its impact on the earth and a pretty decent melodic metal effort from a band with a very varied sound.
Asylum Pyre's web site describes its songs as "sail[ing] through different moods. Sometimes intimist, often heavy, speed or progressive, the album is livened up with some symphonic choirs and arrangements, along with some male vocals interventions." Also, the current singer, Chaos Heidi, is new to the band, replacing Carole Alcantara, the previous frontwoman. Since I haven't yet listened to Natural Instinct, I cannot make any comparisons, but will say that Heidi is a powerhouse vocalist with the style, chops, and range to nicely augment the various styles the band performs on this album.
This is a pretty dark CD, theme-wise. The landscape is almost post-apocalyptic. The acoustic intro, accompanied by a moody cello melody, "Will You Believe Me", starts things off with the general message, "would you believe me if I told you that in 50 years the planet will have gone to hell in a handbasket?" From there, we get into the speedy anthem "Dead in Copenhagen", which I assume is a reference to the 2009 Copenhagen climate change summit, which ended in the failure of participating countries to agree on climate change policies. The song is a definite indictment of politicians' failure to make the necessary policy changes to improve the world's climate. "You have the power to turn the tide, what have you done with your passion...? We're dead in Copenhagen," the lyrics rail.
The dire environmental message continues with "The Frozen Will", which I believe is about Mother Earth's inability to cope with humanity's actions, and then "These Trees," an indictment of logging and general rape of the land ("yes, I will fight for these trees, till death!), and so on. There isn't a single song in here that offers any light or hope, and the message is pretty heavy-handed.
But let me just say this: I didn't have a lyrics sheet to accompany my copy of this album, and my one major let down about this release is that Heidi's English is so accented I had problems understanding the lyrics a lot of the time. I was able to get a lot of gists and enough understanding of each individual song, but not a lot of the nitty gritty details.
Like I mentioned above, and as the band claims on the web site, Asylum Pyre's sound is very varied and that variety is one of the strengths of the album. There are lovely, melancholic sections that contrast nicely with discordant intros, and the pace of the album is beautifully done, with each song setting its own tempo. The first half of the album is pretty fast and almost power metal-ish, but by track six we start to mellow out a bit with my favourite song on the album, "Fishermans Day," which is an acoustic, ballady-tempoed affair sung by male vocalist and guitarist Johann Cadot. This song is yet another indictment of humanity's impact on the planet, this time specifically about the possible future state of the oceans. The sea is black, there are no fish, only "synthetic jellyfish", there are cadavers everywhere, the fishermen have no recourse because their livelihoods are gone, and they basically futilely sit there on the quay praying they survive Judgement Day. It's bleak as hell! But it's a beautiful, gentle song, sung very emotionally and very lovingly by Cadot with Heidi backing him up. The contrast between the imagery and the emotion of the peformance is very spooky and effective. This was definitely a highlight of the album for me.
Fifty Years Later is catchy as hell, with lots of hooky melodies and choruses that take on their own power and life through the energy of Heidi's vocals and the strengths of the song writing. "Against the Sand" takes us on a bit of a symphonic ride during its breakdown, but as with lots of the songs on here, it's memorable because the chorus has a huge stickability factor.
"Any Hypotheses" is Asylum Pyre's journey into progressive metal. The song is over nine minutes long and has prog's typical distinctive sections, long solos, and compositional complexities. Johann starts off with the first verse before Heidi comes in, and then Johann reverts to a growling style that didn't really work for me, though that's a fairly minor complaint of mine. But when all is said and done, this is probably the song I liked least on the album, mainly because I can't figure out what it's really about...there is a lot of talk about scientists and black holes and stuff like that. Here again, not having the lyrics has limited my understanding of what's going on in the song, leaving me confused.
The finale to the album, the title track, "Fifty Years Later", is a slow song, and after "Fishermans Day" is my other favourite on here. It has a very catchy chorus, perhaps the catchiest on the album, and from what I can gather from the lyrics, basically sums up the message started off in the intro and continued throughout the album. The bleak picture of our planet's future is described as "a cemetery in deep space." Again sung with delicacy and sensitivity, the imagery versus the delivery is jarring, but in an effective way, as it was in "Fishermans Day." It's like the band intuitively knew the message of the album was heavy handed and make a concerted effort make something totally doom and gloomy into something easier to swallow.
All in all, I liked this album a lot. I liked with swings from speedy metal to softer pieces, I liked Heidi's belting side and her sensitive side, and I liked – despite its gloominess – the overall message of the album. Hey, I like gloom once in a while. Besides, I pretty much agree with what they're saying.
8.5 / 10
