Reviews

Pelican plays elemental and brooding instrumental metal; the soundtrack to a movie that could never exist concerning the movement of continents. The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw sees the Chicago four piece step up the intensity and the complexity while still maintaining the droning, stoned sound of their last effort Australasia.  Pelican’s grand, expansive sound sometimes threatens to overflow the nine and eleven minute constructions that provide the loose barriers between drifting movements, and can simply overwhelm the listener at times.
 
It’s not all doom-laden grumblings, however. The track Aurora Borealis is full of slow, deft, guitar picking, charged with an underlying heaviness.  The addition of acoustic guitar work contrasts nicely with the denser (and louder) electric epic-ness. I would explain more about what the acoustic brings to the vast Pelican landscape, but its use occurs largely in a dreamy, beautiful track demarcated by a single dot, and the logistics of referring to this song by its title baffle me.
 
The height of Pelican’s greatness may come just after the eight minute mark of the eleven minute Red Ran Amber. A single guitar is the sole instrument remaining after a tremendous rising and falling buildup, and in that single instrument and all the negative space that it sounds off alone in - a glorious sensation, a giddiness overtakes you. All music - everything that can ever exist exists in that simple binary of notes and negative space. Pelican is not right for all moods and people, but Pelican is the kind of band that makes you think of things on a greater scale.