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Mechanical Bird

Bitter Herbs

Written by: BV on 05/06/2013 20:50:51

The collective of musicians known as Mechanical Bird have been praised before for an EP titled ”Daughter of the Wind ” which was released in 2010. Now they’re finally back again with their full-length release entitled “Bitter Herbs”. The album itself however, is far from bitter and often bears the touch of an unmistakably eastern influence with odd instrumentation, long instrumental passages and an overall droning sound atmosphere.

On a track like “Tamarisk Tree” the listener is exposed to an alternative type of folk that, in spite of its rather sparse instrumentation, still gives way to an eastern-influenced mindset with its subtle gong-sounds lurking in the background while some seriously beautiful vocals tend to be the main focus of the track. Despite of the simplistic soundscape of the beginning, “Tamarisk Tree” soon grows bigger with an array of distorted guitars, subtle drum sounds etc. before quietly working its way back to the form first described.

In other words, Mechanical Bird is a multifaceted band that shows off a flair for both the mellow acoustics as well as the more powerful elements of a full-on rock soundscape which gives way to a mindset wherein I’ll probably classify Mechanical Bird as a progressive rock band in the vein of the local Danes in Willows Tale or perhaps The Black Leaves. On “The Seas Will Turn Against Me” the prog-nature of the band comes to a sort of climax as the track slowly builds up with simplistic drumbeats, chanting vocal harmonies and a single chiming guitar. As the track progresses however, the sound grows bigger, more intense and rises to near epic proportions in terms of the bare emotions conveyed through the powerful singing and the neo-classically inspired song-structure. “The Seas Will Turn Against Me” possesses the exact qualities I look for when defining an “epic” sounding track, as the sounds take on a life of their own and leaves me in a state of wonder where I, somewhere deep in my mind, can imagine a landscape appearing before me as the story of the track plays itself out before my eyes.

As the album comes to a close with “Caravan”, the subtle piano and the ever-beautiful vocal harmonies leave me confident in the fact that Mechanical Bird have perhaps constructed one of the most beautiful albums I have heard in the year of 2013 so far and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it will probably stay on my personal top 10 or maybe even top 5 for this particular year – in any case, it would require a significant amount of awesome releases to tip it off that spot, that’s for sure.

Download: Tamarisk Tree, The Seas Will Turn Against Me, Seven Valleys
For The Fans Of: The Black Leaves, Hymns From Nineveh, Willows Tale
Listen: facebook.com

Release Date 22.04.2013
VME