Liquid Sky - Identity
CD Info
2007
Insomnia Media
11 Tracks
English lyrics
Back at the UK’s Female Voices Of Metal gig in October 2005 it was Liquid Sky that stole the show with a short set of largely new tracks from their "upcoming album". Up to that point, previous incarnations of the band had released two extremely good three-track demos, ‘Andrenochrome’ in 2001 and ‘Nightfall’ in 2003, and bundled them together with three more new songs to create the ‘Bloodline’ album in 2004. Since that time band members have come and gone until Liquid Sky finally achieved stability, with guitarist Andy Midgley, keyboard player Rick Ogden and drummer Anthony Marginson joining longer-term members Hecate Taglietti (vocals), Den Constable (bass) and founder member Jonathan Craven (guitars). And now finally, finally, after innumerable ups-and-downs, ‘Identity’ – an ironic title given that identity is something the band have struggled to achieve for so long – is finally on the shelves.
I’ll freely and proudly admit to being a fan of the band since I first saw them at the Bloodstock festival in 2004 (in a review I said that if I’d been a label manager I’d have signed them on the spot after their performance that night) so you’ll have to take this review with that in mind. That said, the reason I like them so much is because they are pretty much perfectionists, weeding out things that don’t work, and as a result ‘Identity’ is exciting and diverse with in-your-face highs like ‘Titan’ where Hecate wears her voice like a knuckle-duster, through ‘Love Labours Lost’ with its razor-sharp riff and über-catchy chorus to the almost plaintive ‘Watch The Ocean’, the song that made me fall in love with this band almost four years ago.
Four songs have been recycled from those original demos – the aforementioned ‘Titan’ and ‘Watch The Ocean’, ‘Stitches’ and ‘Dawn’s Pale Light’ – although they nestle nicely alongside more recent (in relative terms – some of these songs have been in the live set for over two years now) material. There’s no point me running through the album track-by-track because they’re all great, believe me. And there’s no real point trying to identify any highlights, because as far as I am concerned every song is a highlight, although if pushed I’d go for ‘Echo’ because of the guitar work and ‘Dreamstate for Hecate’s vocals; there are no slouches in this band, but the singer has really come into her own, commanding the newer songs from the front and stamping her mark on the material written for her predecessors.
As a metal fan with a liking for Shakespeare and an interest in space exploration, I could tick them off for the mis-spelling in the intro tape ‘Tranquility Base’ and the corruption of the Bard’s actual title (‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’) but that’s only because I feel that I need to offer some hint of criticism (and also because I am anally retentive). ‘Identity’ is a great album, a truly great album, and it shows that Liquid Sky really do have what it takes to make it. It’s been a long time coming, but ‘Identity’ really is worth the wait!
9 / 10
