OK, I really dropped the ball on this one; I’ve been listening to For Giants for almost two years now but it took an email from the band to get me to write about them. My bad! Worse than that, why would I do such a thing to such a great band when I’ve been lauding very familiar acts in the recent few months? For Giants traffic in the same kind of positive, sugar-coated progressive music as Bodhi or Jon Poulin; what you might call “actually good nu-prog”. Luckily, timing is my savior yet again, as the band have released a new album, Big Sky, just last month, allowing me to talk about them in their proper context. Let’s get to it!
Opening track “Remedy” has one side of the For Giants formula; it should be immediately familiar to those who have been following my posts in the last few months. The guitar leads are the dominant aspect but are backed by robust bass, a key element in this emerging style of nu-prog. The overall tone is of course incandescent, drawing on images of bright days, fantastic skylines or vibrant nature. The composition however is cohesive enough to lend the track structure, firmly landing it in on the good side of the nu-prog spectrum.
However, the second track, “We Wrote This Wall”, is also important to understanding the rest of the album. It has much more djent on it, particularly in the palm-muted and robustly distorted sounds of the rhythm guitar. This should come as no surprise, as nu-prog is heavily influenced by the djent movement. However, it is rare to see a band weave between the two sounds with as much ease For Giants do. This is also the space where the band have grown the most since their last releases; Big Sky is a huge step forward in their composition skills, displaying a much more fluid and agile version of their sound.
Overall, this album is simply a joy. It has all the cheese and proficiency you’d like to hear on a release from the genre but it also taps into the heavier and groovier djent roots from which its scene came. Again, it represents a true forward momentum for the band, accessing the sounds which made them good to begin with and using them to make them great. Make sure to check it out and throw the band some money; they more than deserve it. The inbox provideth!