Seyr – 27 Million EP
Seyr – 27 Million EP
Self-Released
Release Date: 07/07/2023
Running Time: 16:02
Review by Laura Barnes
9/10
Recently, I’ve been very lucky with unsigned bands. Last week, Redeye Caravan blew me away with their vaudevillian style of country music and this week I have had the honour of listening to Seyr’s latest EP, “27 Million”. Seyr are a German-Syrian Progressive Metal band fuelled by Death Metal growls and melancholy melodies. Their songwriting style is eclectic, unpredictable, weeping with sorrow one moment and bludgeoning you with a hammer the next. Imagine Parius if they were really, really depressed, with a dollop of Deathwhite chucked in there for good measure.
“27 Million” is an album that creeps up on you slowly. Rather than doing the whole instrumental intro track cliche, the chime-like guitars on opener ‘Spark’ are accompanied by Sebastian Elm’s clean vocals. ‘Life has been a wondrous play’, he sings, but his tone is a sombre one. Something is wrong, a wrongness that becomes all the more evident as the guitars thicken into a quiet mist. ‘Spark’ is short and sweet, like a children’s nursery rhyme with a dark origin. Then enters the beast: Elm growls like the devil’s rottweiler, signalling the start of ‘Opaque’, and it’s here that “27 Million” really begins. The interplay of lyrics and music on this EP is really something to behold – there’s no better way to start a story than ‘From the astral cocoons the black flock burst’, and no better way to soundtrack it than the violent march of chugging guitars.
What follows is not so much a small collection of songs, but one long, fascinating snake of a song. Excuse the somewhat random comparison, but the song structure here is akin to Green Day’s ‘Jesus of Suburbia’, in the sense that the EP explores several different musical avenues as it endeavours to tell a full, vibrant narrative. ‘In Bloom’, for example, is a track of both dread and gentleness, whereas ‘Tide of Mourn’ sounds like a tsunami that devastated the land without malice, pairing explosively heavy instrumentals with unsentimental clean vocals. Balancing bone-crushing Death Metal with the complex technical interludes of prog is a challenge, but one that Seyr pull-off brilliantly.
This was a stunning release, and it’s mind-boggling to me that they haven’t been signed to a label yet. Although, perhaps it is this freedom from external control that allows Seyr to create music so fluid and experimental. Either way, there’s clearly a lot of talent at work here, and I look forward to whatever comes next.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Spark
02. Opaque
03. In Bloom
04. Tide of Mourn
05. Embers
LINE-UP:
Sebastian Elm – Vocals
Levon Khatchatrian – Lead Guitars
Omar Meli – Rhythm Guitars
Max Krüger – Bass
Levin Wießner – Drums
LINKS:
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