Label: Season of Mist
Review by Warren Mayocchi
It is hard to qualify “New Dark Age Tour EP 2015 A.D.” as an EP. It is just under sixty minutes of music, the only way this meets EP status is because it has only four tracks. Three of those just happen to be over 14 minutes long each. Perhaps it could be argued that it is an EP because two of the tracks are cover versions of the Pink Floyd song “Echoes”. The song is split into two parts with a combined length short of forty minutes, Pink Floyd also split the song into two sections as bookends to some of their live performances in the seventies. Both parts of the “Echoes” cover are well done and sound much like Pink Floyd. My only gripe is with the spoken sections. There is a point to them – they are taken from the Pink Floyd Pompeii performance but I have always hated disconcerting voices mixed in with music. For me it breaks the mood, each to their own though, everyone else will probably love the voices. This leaves the two remaining tracks. “Spider Island” is the first song on the album and it opens with a small excerpt from the original Mad Max movie…“If you’re going to waste the bronze, you gotta do it big”. The song is the heaviest track on the album, crawling doom with a condemning vocal. Fantastic! “New Dark Age” follows and is over fourteen minutes of a more progressive style. It works well as a prequel to the Pink Floyd covers, but uses a much darker tone and a depressed vocal to take the listener through a more dramatic journey than the “Echoes” covers. Overall this is an awesome album and signals a great experience for those who can saw (or will see) the band on their tour. You will be sure to love how much emphasis there is on “extended” in Crippled Black Phoenix‘s definition of EP.
Rating – 88/100
Tracklist
- Spider Island
- New Dark Age
- Echoes PT. 1 (Pink Floyd cover)
- Echoes PT. 2 (Pink Floyd cover)
Line Up
- Belinda Kordic – Vocals
- Justin Greaves – Guitar, backing vocals, bass (studio), drums (studio)
- Daniel Änghede – Guitar, vocals
- Jonas Stålhammar – Guitar, backing vocals
- Mark Furnevall – Synthesizer, keyboard, organ, backing vocals
- Daisy Chapman- Piano, keyboard, vocals
- Niall Hone – Bass
- Ben Wilsker – Drums (live)
Links
facebook.com/CRIPPLED-BLACK-PHOENIX-official-111441865546099/