North Sea Echoes – How to Cast a Shadow
North Sea Echoes – How to Cast a Shadow
Metal Blade
Release date: 24/07/26
Review by: Jon Deaux
7/10
Very beautiful, very bleak, sometimes too restrained; you have to check yourself just to make sure you are on the right side of it.
Two members of Fates Warning – a band that has been active even before your parents existed, let alone you – have decided to form a side project. A SIDE PROJECT, MATE. At their age! It is like watching your dad trying to jump out of an airplane. You want to support him, but meanwhile you Google “how far would a nearest air ambulance come?” for precaution.
Ray Alder – with the voice of a man who cries in a car park behind the Travelodge since 1988 – and Jim Matheos, guitarist and producer, whose main skill is having so many songs in him that he just sends Ray a bundle of those, like an order from Deliveroo for depression. “Here, mate, there are twenty-five songs for you, pick up those which will make you lie on the kitchen floor until you pay the mortgage”. And Ray did! And he started going through it and thinking: “Oh, this is about numbness.” “Oh, this is about the rusted bridge and the death of his entire soul”. It’s not Spotify Wrapped, it’s a report of the coroner recorded by Marshall amp.
And this time, there are actual drums. Not simulated, or computerized, but ACTUAL, REAL drumming by a man named Dennis. Sitting there and playing! With sticks! And apparently it just happened by accident and “emerged” somehow, like a rash or like a tumour. You wake up, and there is this session drummer Dennis sitting in your living room playing drums and think “ok, guess we are a bit heavier then”. And quietly start moving all your valuables.
And the first single is called ‘I’ll Leave a Light On’. According to Ray, its lyrics are loosely based on his favourite sci-fi character, but they don’t tell us which one. But it contains this phrase “out there in the black”. It’s Firefly. IT’S FIREFLY, RAY. You have done this “I can neither confirm nor deny” about FIREFLY. Not mystery, but a confession from the man that was forced to admit that he loved a cancelled show of Joss Whedon but is bound by contract to call himself metal. Somewhere Malcolm Reynolds is quietly changing his number.
The original artwork was made for another album, for Tuesday the Sky record – the photographs by Chris Friel, sitting there and gathering dust for years, going spare, as a wedding dress bought for a wedding that was called off after someone found something on somebody’s mobile phone. And Matheos said: “oh – actually, those will fit for THIS album”. Recycled. In the time of financial crisis. Respect. It’s one man’s art project becoming another man’s metaphor. Frankly, it’s more dedication than we have in our own relationships.
And this is what – EVERYTHING on this record is a metaphor for something dying slowly. The rusted bridges, masks coming off, time borrowed – like universe is a payday loan company and Ray didn’t bother reading the conditions of it and now a man is standing at his door. “let it all fall away, let it all turn to grey” – these are not lyrics, these are the phrases they say to you at a hospice when they stop giving you cups of tea.
It is musically beautiful, which is the most annoying thing about it, because I came here for the anger but instead I feel sad in a very tasteful, Scandinavian way. ‘A Time of Innocence and Purpose’ starts like they are trying to bring you down from a ledge and aren’t fully convinced that they should. ‘Enjoy the View’ uses the technique of quiet verse and heavy chorus, and Alder says that it’s about choosing numbness over pain – wow, brave move to put such lyrics on a poster, boys. Nice way to sell the T-shirts. “COME TO SEE US CHOOSING NUMBNESS IN THE STAGE AT 7PM IN WOLVERHAMPTON, THERE WILL BE NO SUPPORT, THERE IS NO SUPPORT FOR ANY OF US”. And “Villains or Saints” is the ballad they are most proud of – and it’s big, and it’s eternal, and it makes you want to pull over on the M6 hard shoulder and just sit there turning your hazards on until a nice policeman talks to you.
This is the part of the article where I say something controversial and you guys can go nuts in the comments section – but this album is too tasteful. That’s the sin. Two men in their late fifties, seventy years of prog metal experience between them, and they produced an album that is elegant, restrained, and devastating in the way only the best, the most expensive therapist can devastate – but at no moment of this album are they losing their minds. At no point is Dennis going berserk on his drums because finally he can use his arms after years of being a session drummer – that is, being a man hired to play quietly and without having a personality. Everything is so quietly devastating. Somnambulant electrofog this, gritty overdriven disquiet that. Somewhere, lads, I want at least one song that is ANGRY for not being on the Fates Warning album instead of this that is SORRY about it, sorry like you are sorry to a nurse.
But, God knows why, it works, and I resent that it works. It is the music of two men who could have easily phoned it in on nostalgia – do the reunion tour, make T-shirts, greet fans at Wolverhampton stage – but instead create something patient, sad and quietly beautiful and not pandering to anyone, least of all themselves. Ray’s voice has aged in the way that it was designed specifically for songs about rust, borrowed time and men leaving lights on for people who aren’t coming back. Matheos is playing guitars like he’s creating a very slow and very sad diagram on how exactly a man falls apart, with footnotes. It shouldn’t work as a “side project”. It is better than most bands’ careers, and honestly humiliating for everyone else currently performing metal, a genre which used to be associated with chainsaw.
They have made twenty five songs and Ray had to CHOOSE which of those he’ll sing – like triage, like a man at the saddest buffet ever – “I’ll have the rusted bridge, and could I have a side of the mask coming off, no I don’t want the numbness, actually you know what, give me the numbness too, put it in a bag, I’ll eat it in the car”. This is this whole album. A man who is handed grief in batches and accepting that: “yeah, alright, I’ll take that one, and that one, that one really does it for me”.
North Sea Echoes has made the whole album about the time running out and everything quietly falling apart, which is nice of them, because now the listener gets to experience all of it in real time. By the last track, you are not listening to an album anymore – you are just waiting for something, and so is Ray.
TRACKLISTING:
01. A Time of Innocence and Purpose
02. Enjoy the View
03. Good Enough
04. I’ll Leave a Light On
05. All Fall Away
06. Revenge
07. Villains or Saints
08. What Is and What Was
09. All That Comes After
10. How to Cast a Shadow
LINKS:
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