2013 has been a pretty amazing year for progressive metal of all sorts. Last Chance To Reason put out the great almost aquatic sounding album Level 3, The Ocean dropped the entirely aquatic Pelagial, and Gorguts returned to show all you young'ins how an OG technical death metal band does the genre right with Colored Sands. There are so many more I could name but, I'm here to take us forward and touch on another great one.
London's The Safety Fire are a hard one to put my finger on. While progressive metal is the easy way to describe them, I would almost call them extreme math rock because they have elements of bands like This Town Needs Guns, Tera Melos and Minus The Bear. If you were to toss those tap happy math bands in a blender with Cynic, The Mars Volta, and the aformentioned Ocean you'd get this very unique band. They do have djent qualities, but thankfully are aware that they have more than the lowest two strings of their guitars. So, if you are generally turned off by the chug-chuchug thing in djent tunes, I saw give it a few seconds and you'll get hit by some guitar acrobatics that should get you going.
Mouth of Swords is the follow-up to last years Grind the Ocean, and the band was able to do what you hope a band does with each new album. They grew in a way that isn't alienating to returning listeners. Much like Last Chance To Reason, The Safety Fire have implemented more melody and clean vocals into their sound as they expanded it. This may serve as a detriment to them for the listeners that look down on all that, but I see this as a vast improvement. Grind The Ocean was one of those albums that required a few listens to get into. Sean McWeeny's screaming vocals were more prevalent then, and they do work, but not as the prominent vocal choice. They are more effective in much more modest doses like they are presented on Mouth of Swords. Also, there are so many memorable melodies vocally and musically on this record, where there just weren't so much last year. There's more of a reason to keep coming back since it gets stuck in your head much easier.
I am finding it difficult to single out a few tracks to point out as ones that work, not because none of them do, but rather because this album serves warrants a start-to-finish album listening experience rather than single songs you'd have on random in some playlist. I suppose in a nutshell "Wise Hands" and "Glass Crush" are the most math rock oriented songs on the album, "Yellowism" seems very inspired by Georgia prog sludge like Baroness or Mastodon, and "Beware The Leopard (Jagwar)" sounds like an awesome hybrid of Cynic, Last Chance To Reason and Between The Buried and Me. Fittingly enough, that last track mentioned features the voice of BtBaM Tommy Rogers in a very well done and mistakable cameo.
I really think this will be the record that sends them to the level of BtBaM, Periphery and other modern prog greats. It really has elements from every corner of the sub-genre, and they are combined in a very successful way.
Also, it is pretty astounding that there was such a quick follow-up put out by the band, and the result doesn't sound forced or rushed in the slightest.
9/10
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