There are some labels that you just know will deliver something interesting. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll like what you get but it will be different. I, Voidhanger is one such label. The Anchoret’s label, Willowtip—home to personal favorites such as An Abstract Illusion and Liminal Shroud, as well as Pyrrhon, Slugdge and Countless Skies among others—is another. So, despite knowing nothing about progressive five-piece The Anchoret, or its debut, It All Began with Loneliness, I was ready for a journey. Led by Canadian Eduard Levitsky, who composed and produced the music, The Anchoret is certainly at home on Willowtip but is it good, or merely interesting?
It All Began with Loneliness is a lot. That’s not a criticism. It’s merely a statement of fact and it’s one that goes beyond the album’s weighty 58-minute runtime. Indeed, it’s the sheer scope of Levitsky’s composition, which slides from the progressive death metal of label mates An Abstract Illusion and Between the Buried and Me to the more languid moods of Fair to Midland, all the way back to the out-and-out prog of Pink Floyd and King Crimson. There is even something of the introspective mid-90s rock of The God Machine and the most recent solo effort from TDEP’s Greg Puciato. It All Began with Loneliness has bluesy, progressive guitar lines, complex drums and percussion, keys, synths, mellotron, not one but two flutes, clarinet solos, gospel vocals and more, all stitched together into a huge, genre-defying tapestry that, somehow, isn’t a hot mess.
On the contrary, It All Began With Loneliness is an intricate and compelling record. Layering modern death metal flourishes and riffs onto the prog blueprint laid down decades ago by Floyd and Crimson is hardly new but it is also not easy to do well. The apparently unknown Leo Estalles’ guitar lines oscillate from pure prog (middle sections of opener “An Office For…”, where they are accompanied by sax solos), into death metal a la An Abstract Illusion and early Opeth (“Until the Sun Illuminates”) and off up to sunny, melodic uplands (“Someone Listening”). Throughout Estalles’ work is impressive, providing the perfect canvas for Sylvain Auclair’s (Heaven’s Cry and Karcius) vocals, which are for the most part clean (only edging into a semi-harsh snarl in a few places, like on “Forsaken”). Auclair’s performance is as varied as the rest of his bandmates’, sliding between Fair to Midland’s Darroh Sudderth and something approaching Maynard James Keenan, but spanning everything in between, you never know where he’s going next. The stilted and hesitant, almost spoken-word, delivery he employs around five minutes into “Forsaken” causes me to catch my breath every time I hear it. This is amplified by the additional vocals provided by guest Nimiwari, who adds gospel soul to “A Dead Man”, and a subtle extra dimension to the percussive “All Turns to Clay”.
The Anchoret sounds excellent throughout, with Levitsky’s bass nicely audible and a fantastic tone to Estalles’ guitar. The additional instrumentation (sax, flutes, clarinet etc.) are given prominence in the mix that I found slightly jarring at first but grew on me quickly and is actually one of the defining features of the record. To return to the question I posed at the outset: good or merely interesting? Happily, both. Very good and more than merely interesting. It’s rare in metal today to find a band that genuinely sounds unique. Sure, The Anchoret has a ton of evident influences but it’s also doing something different from all of them and, for the most part, pulling it off expertly. It All Began with Loneliness is not a perfect album but it’s one I will return to often.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Willowtip Records
Websites: theanchoretofficial.bandcamp.com | theanchoret.com | facebook.com/theanchoret
Releases Worldwide: June 23rd, 2023
