Emolecule is a collaboration between Simon Collins and Kelly Nordstrom with the result being this debut album titled The Architect. It’s not the first time they’ve worked together – for example a previous project a few years ago was as Sound of Contact.
As Emolecule and with The Architect they’ve put together a remarkable near seventy minutes of mind-bendingly heavy, complex and thought-provoking mainly progressive rock.
Though that said the power Norstrom grinds up from his guitar riffs is more akin to some brutal heavy metal and Collin’s drumming is technically awesome.
There’s plenty of heaviness amongst the prog. An expansive and immersive journey which is dark, brooding, powerful, complex, bleak and engaging with some effective keys and synths worked in as the album draws you in more and more.
Take the opening near eleven minute epic of Emolecule. So much going on. Weird time signatures, hard guitar, hypnotically repetitive, robotic style vocals repeating the minimalistic lyrics to punctuate the staccato heavy stuff with a sort of techno undertone.
The title track moves in to more traditional heavy/progressive metal territory with a crunching, clipped slightly distorted riff growling vocals with a hint of melody. A proper attention-grabber. Have a listen:
Prison Planet winds this way and that with some tasty melodic piano and synths going on before the guitars wade in. Arguably the most instantly accessible track on the album.
The bombast continues with Mastermind as does The Turn exploding out from the piano intro and some remarkable soloing from Nordstrom.
To mix up the styles-switching check out Awaken – a stripped down more traditional approach wandering in to melodic rock territory and quite catchy.
Its classy stuff all the way through to Moment of Truth taking things back to the dark, brooding, powerful stuff which explodes building up to the big finish.
With The Architect, Emolecule have an album which is not easy at first though releases more with each spin as the complexity of the compositions start to get in to your head. A challenging yet rewarding experience of inventive progressive rock.
Perhaps an analogy might be to say if Van Der Graaf Generator went even more “out there” than say a heavied-up version of A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers it might sound something like Emolecule. Probably.
>> EMOLECULE THE ARCHITECT ON AMAZON <<