THENCE: We Are Left With A Song (PROGRESSIVE ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

With "These Stones Cry From The Earth" (2011), Thence made a strong impression on our editorial staff. It must be said that it is not common to see an album composed of a single track of more than 57 minutes of such quality and providing so many emotions. Five years later, the Finnish duo, still supported by the saxophonist Aku Kolari, come back with a new opus in a more conventional format. However, "We Are Left With A Song" which consist of seven tracks, is not formatted for FM and continues to take paths that make Thence's music unclassifiable.

Here we navigate between progressive rock with structures that vary in theme and tempo, atmospheric metal with hovering keyboards and airy ambiances that take time to develop, alternative rock with rough guitar protrusions and a clearly independent spirit, and even dark metal. A vast program whose coherence can never be questioned, however, and whose depth will touch everyone in the depths of his being. Thence plays with our feelings and anxieties, awakens our wounds and gives us a luminous hope. "We Are Left With A Song" is always in balance on the edge of the precipice, questioning the future of our world and hesitating between a flight to the stars and a fall into the abyss, bewitching and hypnotising, melancholic and luminous.

Nothing will be spared throughout these 51 intense and captivating minutes. Only the blast beat accelerations that we could hear on 'These Stones Cry From The Earth' have disappeared, giving an even greater coherence to the whole, but without taking anything away from the formidable richness of Erno Räsänen's drumming, one of the many strong points of this opus.

'I Burn The Day, The Ghost' opens this emotional journey with water and bird sounds, a delicate introduction reminiscent of Airbag's Norwegian cousins. And then the emotional lift is launched: a massive bass mixes with layers of keyboards with string sounds bringing depth and lightness. Juha Sirkkiä's fragile and delicate voice confronts saturated guitar riffs before luminous solos emerge. Aku Kolari's saxophone comes to mingle with the ensemble for interventions sometimes reminiscent of Pink Floyd ('No One, Anyone, Be Someone', 'Pursue').

There would be so much to say about the richness of the pieces on this album, and yet it would be impossible to describe the emotions it provokes, as they shake what is deepest in each of us. "We Are Left With A Song" will touch Katatonia fans as well as those of Massive Attack, Anathema and Airbag, while keeping a filiation with the compatriots of Hanging Garden and Throes Of Dawn. Be warned that you won't come out unscathed from listening to these seven tracks with unlimited richness. - Official website

THENCE

WE ARE LEFT WITH A SONG

AUTRE LABEL

PROGRESSIVE ROCK