Rock Paper Scissors Records (label)
09 July 2010 (released)
20 November 2010
It’s a given that you’ll be able to spot the influences in most bands. A truly original sound, especially in the world of metal, isn’t likely to ever emerge again. It’s now basically what you do with those influences and how you channel them when making your own music.
Spiridion do have more than a trace of Tool, a flavour of the Deftones amongst others about their sound. But, they’re not by any means derivative of those bands, they are merely points of reference, because this is a very inventive and impressive debut album. By all accounts they had the rare luxury of time and their own studio to create the album and they’ve used that time and space well.
With openers Thirty Eight & Gone, Becoming Nothing and From Within, Spiridion set out their stall: heavy, complex songs of light and shade and ever changing rhythms. Singer Ross Cocker demonstrates his range from croon to shred, a tight and inventive rhythm section, and guitarists that riff hard but also have an acute sense of melody. It’s tech metal with a squishy heart and mind rather than positronic brain and chrome circuits.
The stand outs are the harrowing sc-fi of A Structure to Form that in turn is the perfect intro to the title track (whose own intro may have James Bond’s lawyers sniffing around) which at little over four turbulent minutes has a real epic air about it. Pareidolia is an instrumental that brings to mind some of the more experimental moments on Black Sabbath’s Paranoid album.
The album does lose a little momentum towards the end and while they aren’t any duds, Inflicted, State of Decay and Perish do sound like padding. However the haunting and intricate Smoke and Mirrors rounds of the album in a fitting way.
A minor point is that it's probably is too long and maybe a single or an EP could have been squeezed out. All in all A Moment of Clarity is a very assured debut in almost every department: the performances are excellent, the production is polished but not absolutely buffed so preserving that grit under the nails that some tech-minded metal bands loose. This album bodes well for the future.
