In case you’re going to take a 16-year break from releasing music, your new materials would possibly as properly acknowledge it. Gospel got here out of nowhere in 2005 with their bold prog-screamo debut, The Moon Is a Useless World, after which vanished again into the ether. The blokes who returned final November with the only “S.R.O.” usually are not the identical spry, melodramatic twentysomethings they had been the final time we heard them, they usually make no effort to hide that. Vocalist Adam Dooling opens the track with the reluctant revelation you might need while you see a brand new wrinkle, really feel a brand new ache, or marvel when your grays began outnumbering your different hairs: “He’s simply an previous soul residing in a younger man’s physique/Now could be it a middle-aged man’s physique/Or a barely older man’s physique?/He’s simply an previous man residing in an previous man’s physique.”
It’s not simply Dooling’s lyrics that trace on the years passed by; his voice, as soon as an open-wounded wail, is now a ragged scar, stuffed with a grit that often precludes a band from being deemed “screamo.” Gospel arrived when the style was in full swing, their debut constructing on the template of pioneers like Orchid and Saetia whereas taking the emotive sound to stranger locations than commercially profitable contemporaries like Thursday and the Used. Their connection to progressive rock was extra in spirit than in observe—certain, they made a couple of epic-length songs and had been keen on heady compositions, however there was no mistaking The Moon Is a Useless World for Near the Edge, even in the course of the elements Dooling wasn’t shredding his vocal cords. However The Loser, however? *Slaps automotive roof* There’s an entire lot of ’70s laser present prog on this child.
Jon Pastir, credited with keyboards and guitars on Gospel’s debut, joined the band when all however one of many songs had been written. The track in query, “A Golden Daybreak,” simply so occurs to have the album’s wildest keyboard solo. In previous dwell movies, Pastir hops on keys from time to time however principally performs rhythm guitar—on The Loser, I’m unsure he ever even touches a guitar. His taking part in takes centerstage on the album, throwing it again to prog’s heyday with hi-sheen tones on “Hyper” that recall Rush’s synthy mid-’80s, a mellotron outro on “S.R.O.” paying homage to early King Crimson, and on almost each track, an overdriven organ that, aside from its affiliation with ’70s AOR, additionally offers Gospel their first-ever connection to the style of music with which they share their title. Though Dooling shreds like he nonetheless has a rhythm guitarist backing him up, Pastir is The Loser’s main gentle—Rick Wakeman clad in flannel as an alternative of a cape.
