Blueneck: The Fallen Host

Metal clips cling tightly to the corners, protecting its guard from damage. The well-worn pages still hold a slight glimmer as they gently brush the fingers. Gold lettering embosses the front, its depth traceable with your very hand.

The gold calligraphy, with a slight tarnish reads "The Book of Post-Rock", and this album faithfully transcribes every single syllable.

Yes, every cliché associated with the genre is present herein for all to see. The pounds of reverberation, the countless crescendos, the nine-and-a-half minute runtimes, the moody, despondent piano-forte, the simmering tension, the cathartic releases, the subdued use of vocals on sporadic occasions, the fact that every song has the complex chord progressions of a one minute punk-rock song yet seeks to hide the fact by introducing more and more instruments.

For fifty-five minutes, this is a conglomerate of every staple, every explored realm and every well-wrung turning that post-rock has ever given us. It's not just by-the-book, it may as well be the audiobook. It's like waking up and knowing how every single second of your day is going to be spent from the moment you put the feet on the floor until the moment you lock your son in the kennel. The only surprise is that there are no surprises. It's like watching The Sixth Sense when Bruce Willis wasn't dead the whole time, where it was just a well-told tale of boy-scared-by-ghosts, boy-decides-to-help-ghosts, boy-overcomes-fear, boy-lives-happily-ever-after. Pleasant enough we suppose, but still perennially destined for the bargain bin.

Even the bits which should sound grandiose, they just ring hollow. "Seven" and its completely unexpected explosion into loud cavalcades of frenetic strumming sounds resolutely hollow: almost tinny in composition. What sound be the epic, grand-standing moment of the song sounds as exciting as a Katie Price autobiography. Rather than evoking awe or wonderment, the only reason you're left scratching your head is in regard to why they picked the most annoying guitar distortion tone they could find. It's like a buzzsaw if the mechanical noises were sampled from Amy Winehouse.

With every turn telegraphed for miles, there is nothing to justify this as a compelling piece of art. It's merely the kind of thing four mildly competent musicians could bash out in an afternoon at a cheap studio. There's nothing explicitly bad to comment about the album bar the fact that there is absolutely nothing good to remark either.

Fifty-five minutes of mildly pleasant, completely generic semi-instrumental post-rock: life is far too short.