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Earthside - 'A Dream in Static' - Full-lenght - 2015

This is a group of highly educated and talented musicians and composers that go under the name of ‘Earthside’. The band was formed not long ago in New Haven, Connecticut. So far only one piece of extraordinary musicianship was recorded, the one I am about to review. The members of ‘Earthside’ are: Frank Sacramone, Jamie van Dyck, Ryan Griffin and Ben Shanbrom. Each and every one of them has a successful music career prior to joining Earthside. Frank does the job of playing keyboard, synthesizers, percussion and additional guitars in the band, and has a trace of many composed songs and produced videos with great success in the past. Jamie plays the main guitar as well as some additional keyboards and sings backing vocal. He also does some songs and video production work outside Earthside and continuously writes analysis on music theory. Ryan is the bass player and supporting vocal, but is equally good at playing saxophone, flute and clarinet. He was serving as a music director in a theater. At last the rhythm is based on Bens’ drum skills to tight everything together. Ben is a consistent columnist regarding the music industries in his spare time. All of them have put together their efforts to bring the first album out in 2015. The genre of the music could be labeled as progressive rock, while it has some elements that go beyond those boundaries. The band themselves describe their songs as ‘cinematic rock’, and while that description doesn’t explain much from the music aspect, it tells a lot of what you are going to experience while listening.

Generally speaking, most of these eight songs featured here last more than seven minutes each, except for three of them. Approximately, this one hour of play-time will go by fast as a lightening and probably you will consider playing the whole set once again. The first song, ‘The closest I’ve come’, is a real ice-breaker and pretty much gives you an idea what Earthside stands for. It is an instrumental, with slow to middle velocity tempo, which has a lot of rhythm variations, tuned in sections that change the atmosphere from fairy-tale melodic theme to blasting car action movie scene. I don’t mention these movie descriptions by chance, as it seems that the songs are meant to provoke you in creating a moving picture images inside your head. The full-length continues with the self-titled ‘A dream in static’, where the vocals appear for the first time. I think that the vocals weren’t meant to have a leading role in these compositions, as the main act is taken by the guitars and synths. This song precisely has a bit more tender and cheerful variations than the rest. All of that is accompanied by the high-pitched singers’ voice turning into rawer parts just at the end. From all of the tracks, my personal favorite comes third – ‘Mob mentality’. It has some good and hard drum sections and the vocal resembles some darker feelings. Kind of reminds me of some popular soundtracks from apocalyptic movies, just before the earth goes into oblivion. Nice synth intros are featured here. The shortest piece, ‘Entering the light’, of 5:27 minutes comes next and it seems that it represents only a long intro for the following song. ‘Skyline’ is the fifth and heaviest song of all, with good combination of easier mix of synts and keyboards, followed by deep heavy metal parts and vise-versa of the recipe. Pretty much they change the sequences two or three times until the song ends. It is also an instrumental. ‘Crater’ and ‘The Ungrounding’ follow, almost completing the second part of the album. Both of these songs are shorter (relatively) and seem slower in pace. Crater is fulfilled by vocals, again being put somehow in the shadows, beside the music. The Ungrounding feels futuristic considering the melodies, and some power metal influence can be sensed as well. At last the twelve minute finisher ‘Contemplation of the beautiful’ ties the whole thing up. The composition is quite long but also one of the most remarkable. For sure it has the best vocals on this album where you can feel the energy of the band at their full capacity, well maybe for the first time here. Everything vanishes in an oriental fade-out and a wish to hear and see a lot more from this tremendous quartet.

The album was produced in Sweden by David Castillo (Opeth, Katatonia) and Jens Bogren (Opeth, Symphony X) and has a tight and strong quality of the production. The ‘Moscow studio symphony orchestra’ appears on two songs, as well as guests like Lajon Witherspoon (Sevendust), Daniel Tompkins (Tesseract), Max ZT, Björn Strid (Soilwork, The Night Flight Orchestra) and Eric Zirlinger (Face The King). If all of this sounds intriguing enough, check the bands first born and wait for more upcoming quality music from them.