Ilium - Sirens of the Styx - Re-Styxed (2017)
Ilium - Sirens of the Styx - Re-Styxed- Label - Nightmare Records
Bands Website - https://iliumaustralia.bandcamp.com/
Track List
Embrace the myth
The celestial sphere
Antigone
Quoth the Raven
Ode of the trans-dimensional puppeteer
Half-life
Incipience Beowulf defeats Grendel
Solitary Empires
Semblance
Tombsouls
Sirens of the Styx
On this journey of looking for new metal bands, our glorious leader Mr Toby Gamble, of the Metal Underground, searches relentlessly every day and has me listen to no less than 3 new bands. Every day. I’m not even joking. I love this nightly ritual. It has become something that I haven’t had time to do in the past few years and in my opinion has probably been one of the reasons I had lost my passion for writing and reviewing. 2 weeks-ish ago, he introduced me to an Australian band called Ilium. Immediately I was like, OH HELL YES, let’s get this one!
Upon further study of this band, I learned that Sirens of the Styx was a re-release and contacted Jason Hodges, the shredder of this amazing group, to learn more. In this process, I ironically found out that we have some small world connections in mutual acquaintances and I got a chance to absorb this 11 track epic album.This entire album is really complex and diverse. No 2 songs are really alike. It is a prog power masterpiece with all of the wonderful things that I again love about Metal, in particular, Power Metal. Jason advised me that he and Adam Smith were on this album and the original vocals were done by Mark Snedden but the re-Styx is guested by Lord Tim. Drums are done by Tim Yatras.Each of the tracks are fantastic. It’s a symphonic album with keyboards but not overdone or overstated as some progressive power metal can be at times. I loved the keyboard solo on “Semblance.” There are great crunchy rhythm driven bass lines in “Solitary Empires”. When I say Diverse, I mean it in every sense of the word. This album is never stale or redundant in my opinion. Each track is different and unique in its sound and time signature. “Half-life” is reminiscent of the days of thrash and the title track is epic and tale telling as is “….Beowulf defeats Grendel”.I am a huge fan of the use of classic tales and poems to tell a story using music. The use of Antigone and Beowulf as well as “Quoth the Raven” were intriguing for me. This also gave me a chance to have a great discussion about the tragic tale of the daughter/sister of Oedipus with our Editor in Chief of the Underground while blasting this amazing metal soundtrack in the background. It doesn’t get much better than that!Ilium is pelvis crushing metal (pun intended) and I am honored to have been introduced to it.I look forward to going into the back library to hear more. My sincerest thanks to Jason Hodges for his communications while I worked on this and for his patience. It’s been pleasure hearing your work.
