PERICARDIUM - review added 28th August 2009
Album Review: Salutary (2009)
For fans of: Progressive Rock... and mini albums
Salutary by Pericardium is only 8 tracks and thirty minutes, possibly the shortest average song length for any progressive album ever, but this band is more about style-shuffling than out-and-out disjointed complex prog music.
San Francisco group Percardium got together at the start of 2006, fusing all sorts of music including hip hop, jazz and metal. The sound has now refined itself into a heavy take on bands like Muse mixed with a poppy/indie edge. The album artwork hints at psychedelic craziness but, a few trips into madness aside, Salutary is a straight ahead foray into the outer regions of normality.
Members Sean E. Sullivan (guitar and vocals), David Marshall (bass), Mike Black (guitar and keys) and Luis Munoz (drums) are clearly a talented bunch of chaps. The vocals don't do a great deal for me but they certainly aren't terrible. Sean E. Sullivan's voice is just too poppy for my liking. I don't even vaguely advocate smoking, but he could do with something to harden his sound up. Maybe he should try drinking a drop of sandpaper milkshake or something.
The anally titled 'A Hymn for Doves to the Rhythm of Hawks' isn't anywhere near as annoying as it sounds. The guitar sound is groovy, throbbing and really rather heavy. The singing doesn't fit in with the music however and that's a shame because this could be a great track. Sean hasn't got a bad voice at all, he just sounds like he's singing in the wrong genre. Even as an intriguing crossover-fusion-experiment it isn't there. '21st Century' is more successful as a cohesive piece of work, but it isn't rock - it sounds more like an indie version of Mika.
'Unattainable' is an anonymous entry that's as sticky in the mind as Teflon, 'Ecliptic Corridor' is a bass-led take on Californian chillout beach music and 'Ataraxia's End' is a cross between mellow jazz and Slayer. It could be good but it's too schizophrenic to be truly great. 'The Mist of May' and 'Neverending' are both too introspective and too quiet to be interesting.
Salutary is a very well performed album but it's too self indulgent for me. If they focused more on either the heavy stuff or the lighter stuff and tweaked the presently mismatched vocals accordingly they could go somewhere. At the moment they are trying to bridge too many gaps. The end result is more Tacoma Narrows than Golden Gate.
Check out... The sound of metal with the singing of a petal.
Track List:
1. Salutary
2. A Hymn for Doves to the Rhythm of Hawks
3. 21st Century
4. Unattainable
5. Ecliptic Corridor
6. Ataraxia's End
7. The Mist of May
8. Neverending
Artist's website(s): Pericardium , MySpace
