Pelican - Nighttime Stories

Though for awhile I thought I kinda was, I’ve never really been the biggest Pelican fan. They were one of those bands that helped me get into the exclusively instrumental field progressive rock/metal that I thought I liked more than I actually did, which I later realized as I got far more into bands like the more booming Russian Circles, the more technically dazzling Animals as Leaders, and even Scale the Summit. But I’ve still always held that respect for them in my heart for getting me into this side of prog metal, and I of course had my hopes for this album going into it. That being said, I feel kind of like an idiot for setting the bar as low as I feel I did for them after hearing Nighttime Stories, because Pelican sure did not go easy on this album.
This is quite possibly the most energetic and inspired I have ever heard them sound. The flow of the tracks between the mellower post-rock/post-metal breathers and the more fully dialed-in and driving groovers, which is mirrored on the smaller scale in the more expansive tracks as much as their instrumental themes allow, makes for a very exciting and engaging listen much less predictable than most other albums in this genre, including Pelican’s, usually are.
The menacingly doomy intro groove on “Cold Hope” dives into a delicious seven minutes of mid-paced guitar distortion dancing while the title track a is similarly tasty, crunchy bite of the band’s heavier side with both gritty guitar riffs and rumbly distorted bass lines abound throughout the song’s roller coaster arrangement. I also really like the brooding low-register riffs, the driving palm-muted rhythm, and the noisy guitar wailing of the sprawling and cinematic closer (of the standard version) “Full Moon, Black Water”, which is probably the most engaging and fulfilling piece on the album. “Blacktop Arteries”, meanwhile, is probably one of the more meager and somewhat dragging of the heavier cuts on the album.
But the shorter or more ambient tracks like “WST”, “Abyssal Plane” and “It Stared at Me” do well to piece up the album’s heaviness at the beginning, though I think they could have been spaced out into the second half of the album a little better. The credits-esque coda of “Darkness on the Stairs” on the Bandcamp version of the album probably could have been moved somewhere into the middle; though I like it’s rapid traditional metal guitar work, it just doesn’t feel like as much of a finale as “Full Moon, Black Water” and kind of takes away from the conclusive finish that epic track provides the album.
Overall though, I was pleasantly surprised with how energized and indulgent in the grime of the bass and the guitars’ low end this album ended up being without resorting to cheap tricks or compromising the dynamic of the composition. If anything, the compositions seem largely stabilized by the solid foundation of booming bass and guitar, and I definitely enjoyed the way the band was able to bend and shape them gradually and subtly from their simple roots into more winding measures. After the six years of absence after the lackluster Forever Becoming, this album was definitely a splendid and reassuring way to bounce back, I will definitely be enjoying this album quite a bit.
Pretzels/10

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