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Hey! Listen To Spires Of The Lunar Sphere!

Whenever we listen to weird music, the question we must ask ourselves is: yes, but does it work? This is an antidote against being swept away in the weirdness itself,

8 years ago

Whenever we listen to weird music, the question we must ask ourselves is: yes, but does it work? This is an antidote against being swept away in the weirdness itself, mistaking lack of cohesion for eclecticism and a scattered focus for experimentation. When listening to the subject of this post, we need to keep that question at hand at all times. Spires of the Lunar Sphere exist in the niche field also occupied by Horse The Band, Arsonists Get All The Girls and other heavy bands that mix diverse influences into their music. Here, we have a sick blend of grindcore, deathcore, retrowave synths, hip hop breaks, maritime piano and more. Deep breath now, here we go.

The self-titled, closing track is everything you need to know about this album. It announces itself with synths seemingly straight out of the original Prince of Persia games and quickly devolves into heavier, deathcore-tinged passages. But what’s this? Emo like backing vocals are introduced in the bridge, setting a more urgent and desperate feeling to the track. Before we’ve had time to ingest them, there’s a smooth hip hop break, narrating vocals silky against our ears. It doesn’t last long and the track explodes into the grindcore menace that characterizes the rest of the album.

However bewildering this all sounds, you’d be mistaken to think that these are all the elements on the album: opener track “Sweets City” introduces some jazz piano, post metal narration and atmospheric vibes while “BERZERKER CLOUD” turns the grindcore to the maximum setting and goes plain bat-shit crazy on us. But, does it work? For this album I would say it depends: what mood are you in? Are you interested in a well-realized and made album, that takes its time with its ideas and concepts? Then no, this doesn’t work. But are you looking for some good, clean fun, bouncy music that’s also heavy and brave? Then yes, this does work as that’s exactly what it delivers.

End of the line, you’re going to have to listen for yourself. Spires of the Lunar Sphere are a potentially divisive band. Some of you will scratch your heads and wonder why I even bothered writing about them while some of you will let go and spasm wildly to the epilepsy induced genre switches. I hope it’s mostly the latter; this is an opportunity for fun that you won’t want to miss.

Eden Kupermintz

Published 8 years ago