Year of Release: 2006
Label: ProgRock Records
Catalog Number: n/a
Format: CD
Total Time: 00:00:00
Amongst others, this disk -- Sylvan's Posthumous Silence -- has been in rotation since after I saw the band perform live at CalProg in October 2008 – although it had been sent here for review some time before that, as its 2006 release date would indicate. But, once I put in the player, it was hard to take it out – it's that great. And this review has "languished" longer than it should only because of life circumstances meant it was left queued up for review for weeks beyond it's "due date."
That preamble over, let me not delay any further. As I'd expected from their release prior to this, X-Rayed, Posthumous Silence is intense and dramatic. Although from the first track, "Eternity Ends" you may not expect that. It is merely the calm before the storm, a storm that begins to pick up in turbulence with "Bequest Of Tears" and comes to full tempest with "In Chains." There are lulls in the storm but mostly we get turbulent tracks, including the especially raw "The Last Embrace."
Now, Sylvan are not a metal band, per se -- certainly not extreme or thrash metal -- so we aren't talking that kind of sonic fury – though I fully believe they'd be capable of it. If you're familiar with the band, you would have expected that they were. They are a harder edged prog band with a prog metal band … style; more prog rock than say Dream Theater, but like them (and their "offspring"), just as dynamic. And if you know me, you know I love music that has dynamic shifts from light and dark, from pastoral to rock, from calm to fervent. But you might also suggest that Sylvan, with this album, bridge progressive rock and dark metal … its certainly gloomy enough subject-wise. Maybe say they are a bridge between Marillion and Evergrey.
Like all the best prog rock (and music in general), Sylvan are terrific when it comes to the richness of their arrangements. It starts or ends with the fabulous vocals of Marco Glühmann. He can do sweet, he can do angry, he can do wistful, sad, and all points in between and around. And surrounding his vocals, we get sweet, searing and soaring guitar phrases from Kay Söhl, and more besides as some percolate, swirl… all the adjectives. Not to mention that Matthias Harder makes full use of his drum kit – no mere bash-bash from him, no sirree. Just as the music goes from subtle to boldly stated so does his drum and percussion work. Keyboards swell, tinkle, widdle and …um… percolate with the best of them out there, allowing Volker Söhl to fill out and surround the arrangements with lush accents and leads. And holding down the bottom end, giving the music it's throb, when it needs it, is bassist Sebastien Harnack. Now, it's easy to say "the band is tight" on disc, that's what a producer is for, and in mixing everything can be "fixed." But they are this tight live, so it's not just a studio construction. And tight they are on this album. I said, it is intense.
If there's a criticism – and someone did express it to me at CalProg (it may been our very own Tom Karr, in fact; but don't quote me on that in case it wasn't) that they found the music of Sylvan "samey" - in that the dynamic was the same for each piece. And yes, I find that to be a valid comment. That energy might dissipate in different directions, but, and certainly here on Posthumous Silence, there is that same underlying… pattern.
However, that doesn't mean that each piece sounds the same – if "In Chains" is a cry for release, then "Pane Of Truth" is more sweeping, romantic, a silky and rich mix of keys, guitars and percussion. Well, except for the harshly screaming voices that play out an emotional scene during the bridge. Here we might mention, in passing, Marillion's Brave. There is that same dramatic intensity, a sense of scope. And yes, in a manner of speaking, Posthumous Silence is a concept album, as we enter the darker inner world of a girl through her diary. From the band's website, we learn that framing is that the girl's father finds the diary of his "apparently dead" daughter. We shift between these two points of view, though the majority of them are the girl's.
Even more intense, even more raw than "In Chains" is the third "chapter" entitled "Forgotten Virtue," with it's frenzied screams of "And I can not, I can not stand it all…" Later we get the soaring "Answer To Life" which leads into the heartbreakingly sad "Message From The Past," where the father laments not being able to save his child from, what we can presume, is suicide. For the girl, things come to a head in "The Last Embrace." This culmination of all that she felt, expressed in the chorus, becomes raw emotion – a need for release, rage…all at once and done in what I thought of as a Pain of Salvation kind of way. And in her release, she finds her Eden, in "A Kind Of Eden."
There is, what may be a twist ending here…. as revealed in dialog that occurs at the end of "A Kind Of Eden" and before the closing, title track.
In reading their website, I learned that both this and their subsequent release Presets (2007) were produced at the same time. I have, of course, all been spinning that disk and a review is forthcoming.
All in all, this is terrific album. I do think it outdoes X-Rayed, and that was a killer album to me. In fact, getting to play it again for this review just may mean it'll be "stuck" in there for a while again.
Also released by Point Music (10298)
Tracklisting:
Eternity Ends (2:03) / I - Bequest Of Tears (3:19) / In Chains (8:38) / II - Bitter Symphony (1:20) / Pane Of Truth (9:06) / III - No Earthly Reason (1:57) / Forgotten Virtue (6:43) / The Colors Changed (5:58) / IV - A Sad Sympathy (1:42) / Questions (6:59) / Answer To Life (5:56) / V - Message From The Past (3:00) / The Last Embrace (3:27) / A Kind Of Eden (4:55) / Posthumous Silence (4:59)
Musicians:
Marco Glühmann - vocals
Matthias Harder - drums, loop programming, sound effects
Sebastian Harnack - bass
Kay Söhl - guitar
Volker Söhl - keyboards
Guest musicians:
Stefanie Richter - cello
Guido Bungenstock - additional guitar
Ensemble Vokalkolorit - choir
Discography:
Chamäleon - Chamäleon (tape) (1992)
Chamäleon - Slaves (tape) (1994)
Chamäleon - Demo '95 (tape) (1995)
Signs Of Life (track on a sampler) (2000)
Deliverance (1999)
Encounters (2000)
Artificial Paradise (2002)
X-Rayed (2004)
Posthumous Silence (2006)
Presets (2007)
Leaving Backstage (2008)
Posthumous Silence - The Show (DVD) (2008)
Genre: Progressive Rock
Origin DE
