A picture's worth a thousand words. It's a cliché we've all A heard too many times in our lives. However, when the artwork for the new Caligula's Horse album, Charcoal Grace, is compared to that of its 2020 predecessor, Rise Radiant, readers will see everything they need to know about the Aussie prog quartet's last four years.
Rise Radiant's cover was a lavish, colourful painting. Crammed with springtime imagery from deer to flowing water and emerald grass, it was created at a time when, as guitarist Sam Vallen phrases it, the band had "all their ducks in a row". Then the pandemic happened. Now, Charcoal Grace is jet-black; flora and fauna are replaced by a human face distorted and washing away into nothingness.
It's a pretty surefire sign that some morale has been bludgeoned to death.
"It seems like a kind of dark way to begin this conversation but, around 2020 or 2021, we didn't really see a future being in a band," Vallen explains at the start of his video call with Prog. He's talking to us from his home in Brisbane.
"I don't know if you remember, but we saw a tonne of bands break up in that time - obviously, this was not an experience that was unique to us in any way. We had this view from the top of the world, which was immediately cut off into nothing, which is depressing enough, but then we also had this push that a lot of bands had. There was this external motivation to rebook tours six months ahead, make plans that are probably not going to happen. It required all this creative energy and felt like it was for nothing." Before the pandemic, Caligula's Horse were one of the most prolific acts in progressive music. Vallen co-founded it as a project with vocalist Jim Grey in 2011; they released their debut, Moments From Ephemeral City, later the same year and, between that point and 2020, put out new albums within three years of one another.
The band even found the space to tour with such genre icons as Mastodon, Opeth and Sleepmakeswaves in between. Following a record deal with Inside Out Music in 2015 (home to Dream Theater, Devin Townsend and Jethro Tull), everything was going the right way and then, nothing...
"I have to be careful how I frame [the band's lives during the pandemic]," Vallen says. "You saw the deaths in Italy and even New York City early on, while we in Australia - this little island that we live on - were basically immune to that. We went into some of the most severe lockdowns in the world, unable to do anything whatsoever, but I feel like it would be in bad taste to suggest that our experience was any worse than anywhere else." Vallen's being diplomatic. For Prog in London, our call is taking place at the sociable hour of 10.30am, but it's currently 8.30pm in Brisbane. The guitarist admits his brain is "fried" at the end of a long working day, which has also included parenting his young son, and he speaks carefully to avoid saying anything too dramatic or sensational. We also know he's being diplomatic because the lyrics on Charcoal Grace (like its artwork) paint a far more evocative and traumatic picture of the past few years.
Caligula's Horse say that Charcoal Grace isn't a concept album, but its songs all relate to the tribulations of the pandemic, even if tangentially and they're all pretty bleak. Lead single Golem is about struggling with hope when lockdowns were ending only to ramp up again, repeatedly. 'I'm on my knees at the end to beg for that feeling again,' Grey sings, before depressingly replying to himself: 'Sling hope around your neck' Meanwhile, the album's centrepiece - the four-part, 24-minute Charcoal Grace itself challenges the virtue of forgiveness and candidly unpicks how child abuse survivors deal with trauma as they grow up. 'Hit me again and I'll spit out the blood of your saints!' Charcoal Grace IV, Give Me Hell, angrily declares.
Vallen also likens the suite's lyrics to an exploration of relationships amid the pandemic.
"One big element is the idea of the people who had relationships fall apart, before or during the pandemic," the guitarist says. "It was a time where people, especially a lot of the older generation, were dying. How do people deal with the forgiveness of parents, loved ones or even old foes when there's that shift?" To accompany that darkness, Charcoal Grace also contains the heaviest, densest music Caligula's Horse have ever unloaded. Golem is a tightly packed progressive metal anthem, defined by Grey's flighty, gorgeous voice clashing with the impactful rhythm section and Vallen's fast-fingered riffing.
That said, the album is also the band's most progressive. There's that central, multipart suite of a title track at its heart, which rises from spacious compositions and clean guitar tones to cathartic, complex aggression. Opening track The World Breathes With Me fills 10 minutes with its slowly rising introduction, followed by a host of soulful solos from Vallen: the guitarist's ability to pull shimmering melodies out of the most callus-shredding technicality has made him one of the most distinct players in modern prog.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1706879462/articles/ZheG8KL1-1707139868101/b5SSdfkxV1707139970289.jpg]
Later, Mute goes on to conclude the album as a 12-minute behemoth, endowed with flute passages and postrock-like crescendos.
It's all the polar opposite to the more direct, uplifting Rise Radiant - and, says Vallen, that progressive scope was not explicitly planned. "The assumption from the beginning was that we weren't going to be able to avoid it," he remembers. "There are probably two reasons why: one would be that we try to avoid repeating ourselves, and the punchy, concise Rise Radiant approach wouldn't make sense a second time. The second is that the darker and more thoughtful themes required more rumination and more space."
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1706879462/articles/ZheG8KL1-1707139868101/6948801987.jpg]
Caligula's Horse - then composed of Vallen, Grey, co-guitarist Adrian Goleby, bassist Dale Prinsse and drummer Josh Griffin - put starting a follow-up to Rise Radiant off for months. Although the album came out in May 2020 (weeks after the lockdowns came into effect), the band avoided re-entering writing mode.
They instead waited, hoping for the chance to properly promote their latest release on the road. But with that came a seriou...
Rise Radiant's cover was a lavish, colourful painting. Crammed with springtime imagery from deer to flowing water and emerald grass, it was created at a time when, as guitarist Sam Vallen phrases it, the band had "all their ducks in a row". Then the pandemic happened. Now, Charcoal Grace is jet-black; flora and fauna are replaced by a human face distorted and washing away into nothingness.
It's a pretty surefire sign that some morale has been bludgeoned to death.
"It seems like a kind of dark way to begin this conversation but, around 2020 or 2021, we didn't really see a future being in a band," Vallen explains at the start of his video call with Prog. He's talking to us from his home in Brisbane.
"I don't know if you remember, but we saw a tonne of bands break up in that time - obviously, this was not an experience that was unique to us in any way. We had this view from the top of the world, which was immediately cut off into nothing, which is depressing enough, but then we also had this push that a lot of bands had. There was this external motivation to rebook tours six months ahead, make plans that are probably not going to happen. It required all this creative energy and felt like it was for nothing." Before the pandemic, Caligula's Horse were one of the most prolific acts in progressive music. Vallen co-founded it as a project with vocalist Jim Grey in 2011; they released their debut, Moments From Ephemeral City, later the same year and, between that point and 2020, put out new albums within three years of one another.
The band even found the space to tour with such genre icons as Mastodon, Opeth and Sleepmakeswaves in between. Following a record deal with Inside Out Music in 2015 (home to Dream Theater, Devin Townsend and Jethro Tull), everything was going the right way and then, nothing...
"I have to be careful how I frame [the band's lives during the pandemic]," Vallen says. "You saw the deaths in Italy and even New York City early on, while we in Australia - this little island that we live on - were basically immune to that. We went into some of the most severe lockdowns in the world, unable to do anything whatsoever, but I feel like it would be in bad taste to suggest that our experience was any worse than anywhere else." Vallen's being diplomatic. For Prog in London, our call is taking place at the sociable hour of 10.30am, but it's currently 8.30pm in Brisbane. The guitarist admits his brain is "fried" at the end of a long working day, which has also included parenting his young son, and he speaks carefully to avoid saying anything too dramatic or sensational. We also know he's being diplomatic because the lyrics on Charcoal Grace (like its artwork) paint a far more evocative and traumatic picture of the past few years.
Caligula's Horse say that Charcoal Grace isn't a concept album, but its songs all relate to the tribulations of the pandemic, even if tangentially and they're all pretty bleak. Lead single Golem is about struggling with hope when lockdowns were ending only to ramp up again, repeatedly. 'I'm on my knees at the end to beg for that feeling again,' Grey sings, before depressingly replying to himself: 'Sling hope around your neck' Meanwhile, the album's centrepiece - the four-part, 24-minute Charcoal Grace itself challenges the virtue of forgiveness and candidly unpicks how child abuse survivors deal with trauma as they grow up. 'Hit me again and I'll spit out the blood of your saints!' Charcoal Grace IV, Give Me Hell, angrily declares.
Vallen also likens the suite's lyrics to an exploration of relationships amid the pandemic.
"One big element is the idea of the people who had relationships fall apart, before or during the pandemic," the guitarist says. "It was a time where people, especially a lot of the older generation, were dying. How do people deal with the forgiveness of parents, loved ones or even old foes when there's that shift?" To accompany that darkness, Charcoal Grace also contains the heaviest, densest music Caligula's Horse have ever unloaded. Golem is a tightly packed progressive metal anthem, defined by Grey's flighty, gorgeous voice clashing with the impactful rhythm section and Vallen's fast-fingered riffing.
That said, the album is also the band's most progressive. There's that central, multipart suite of a title track at its heart, which rises from spacious compositions and clean guitar tones to cathartic, complex aggression. Opening track The World Breathes With Me fills 10 minutes with its slowly rising introduction, followed by a host of soulful solos from Vallen: the guitarist's ability to pull shimmering melodies out of the most callus-shredding technicality has made him one of the most distinct players in modern prog.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1706879462/articles/ZheG8KL1-1707139868101/b5SSdfkxV1707139970289.jpg]
Later, Mute goes on to conclude the album as a 12-minute behemoth, endowed with flute passages and postrock-like crescendos.
It's all the polar opposite to the more direct, uplifting Rise Radiant - and, says Vallen, that progressive scope was not explicitly planned. "The assumption from the beginning was that we weren't going to be able to avoid it," he remembers. "There are probably two reasons why: one would be that we try to avoid repeating ourselves, and the punchy, concise Rise Radiant approach wouldn't make sense a second time. The second is that the darker and more thoughtful themes required more rumination and more space."
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1706879462/articles/ZheG8KL1-1707139868101/6948801987.jpg]
Caligula's Horse - then composed of Vallen, Grey, co-guitarist Adrian Goleby, bassist Dale Prinsse and drummer Josh Griffin - put starting a follow-up to Rise Radiant off for months. Although the album came out in May 2020 (weeks after the lockdowns came into effect), the band avoided re-entering writing mode.
They instead waited, hoping for the chance to properly promote their latest release on the road. But with that came a seriou...
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Prog (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 147