5ive – Hesperus

• 3rd Apr 2008

It’s interesting that as you reduce the amount of instruments within a sonic landscape that very often the sound becomes more involved, interesting and daring.

5ive’s completely melodic excursion ‘Hesperus’ is one such example of when this works, that adding vocals or other extenuious sounds would be like drawing a clowns face on a piece of art.

It’s an immensely strong noise that’s produced from the absolute start ‘Gulls’ being the sound of a beating-it’s as though Kyuss woke up from their stoned haze very, very pissed off.

It’s mood with menace when ‘Hesperus’ works ‘Kettle cove’ and the twin songs of ‘News’ being anything but background music.

Tracks like ’Heel’ and ’Polar 78’ represent songs which pull 5ive closer to the soundtrack abyss, not for their execution but in the maintenance of a melodic idea and actually would have benefited from being longer and more involved.

With extended jams and riffs repeated with variations it can be exceptionally difficult to maintain interest, and the heavy music genre is often frowned for its intelligence, but with the resurgence in interesting landscapes and bands like Mastodon, Pelican & Tool opening doors most people never even realized their where walls 5ive represent where it can be done effectively.

Mark Cooper.