The Ghost Of What We Knew

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8.0

• Band:
  AEONS
• Duration: 01:06:21
• Available from: 02/07/2024
• Label:

• Sliptrick Records

Third work for the Aeons, a quintet originally from the Isle of Man, a small island located between England and Ireland and with less than one hundred thousand inhabitants, and we can immediately say that the excellent sensations that we described in the review of the predecessor “Consequences” are confirmed and, perhaps even more, increased after listening to this new “The Ghosts Of What We Knew”.
After having passed, during the production phases, through the expert hands of Sebastian 'Seeb' Levermann of the Teutonic Orden Ogan, we find ourselves in front of a concentration of power, with guitar outbursts that go from a Scandinavian death taste to riffs much closer to stoner, and of melody, with acoustic passages and melancholic ballads – such as the delicate “Blood”, which is close to the first Staind of “Break The Cycle”.
And this is precisely the strength of Aeons: the three voices, one rough and shouted and two clean, that is, those of Skippy, Scott and Si (the latter two also guitarists), allow a continuous passage on multiple levels in the sung textures, which can suddenly throw anger in our faces, as in the frequent changes of rhythm in the introductory “Noose” or in the conclusive “Collapse”, or which instead manage to soothe suffering as if they were cradling our dark moments, like the balsamic “Machines” with its arpeggios and the suffering voice.
Here, then, “The Ghost Of What We Knew” can be – paraphrasing an immortal cinematic quote – feather and can be iron: together with the rhythmic part of Joe on bass and Justin on drums, we also find the inclusion of electronic parts, keyboards and industrial settings, and everything blends perfectly, track after track, with the long progressive-style digressions or short and immediate songs, with a more retro flavour (in addition to the already mentioned Staind, there are influences of early Slipknot for the double use of the voice and for the accelerations and of Tool for the musical atmospherics).
A special mention for the very long “Ghosts” of almost twenty minutes, a complete work in itself, a sort of photo album in music, with a slow start and with sensations of temporal suspension with the reverbs, to then move on to more cadenced rhythms, growl vocals, heavier riffs and then open up again to clean verses and great guitar solos. All repeated at least three times, to then go quickly towards the final crescendo with some technicalities and a choral climate between melodic, rhythmic and arrangements.
Having reached the end of the listening session, we can say that we are faced with another great work by these Aeons, a confirmation in the progressive panorama that ranges up to more extreme sounds and that with this “The Ghosts Of What We Knew” puts an exclamation point on their, albeit short, discography.