Mutiny On The Bounty

With Trials, their second album, Mutiny on the Bounty have decided to take a definitive step into the ever more crowded and confusing world of prog rock. This is still a heavy album but they’ve smoothed the edges and bumped up the sound from their debut, Danger Mouth, and with production from Matt Bayles, it sounds huge. There is one problem, which isn’t obvious from the start but as the album progresses is ever more grating.

The album opens with two instrumentals the short, pulsing The Long Loud Silence and multi-faceted North Korea. The latter pretty much sets the tone for the album: frenetic and frantic musicianship, multiple time-changes and hideously complicated arrangements. Artifacts follows in the same vein and its here we first hear the vocals and this is a weakness. They are a jot easier on the ear than the first record but not much. There are initially some good performances, on the aforementioned Artifacts, later on Statues and Shifting Paradigms but they decide to go into shouty mode for no real reason or of any discernible benefit to the song.

For example on For the Men Who Had Everything, which after a short Genesisish intro we are assaulted by the sort of vocal that only a football ground could appreciate . There are positives and the highlights are the closing brace of Shifting Paradigms and Mapping the Universe. The former with its unsettling drum climax and the latter, the third instrumental, the keyboards giving it a reverent air that builds to a satisfying ending.

Overall this is a solid album, and one can’t fault the musicianship which is spectacular all the way through. However, some of the vocals on this record seriously distract from what is an interesting and challenging album, which requires some patience to digest and enjoy properly.