Knowing that Talons are an instrumental post-rock influenced band, you might be forgiven for thinking that the gentle chiming tones that occupy the opening seconds of the first track, 'St Mary Will Be The Death of Us' are the first stage in lulling the listener into a mellow torpor of niceness. That all changes when seconds later, the drums kick in, followed by guitars and violins (yes, plural), and before you know it, they've whipped up a sonic malestrom and hauled you from your comfortable listening spot into the middle of a math-rock labyrinth of key and tempo changes, left turns and stop/start judders. There are also come crushing power chords and magnificently interweaving jazz-tinged noodling niceties, all within a couple of bars of one another. Dull, predictable or ordinary it isn't, and that’s just the first number.
Ah, so it's been produced by former Forward Russia front man Tom Woodhead, who’s also worked with I Concur. The layering, the high-octane and unpredictable changes... Yes, it makes sense. Talons have also previously released a split single with And So I Watch You From Afar, a band who are perhaps best described as a dazzling mix of post-rock and metal. Again, it makes sense. Talons might not trade in quite such hard-edged sounds, but hell, they certainly do rock.
There are wide-screen cinematic vistas spread across the vast expanses encompassed within the domains of 'Hollow Realm', and much more besides. 'Iris' features car-chase soundtrack moments that suddenly explode in rapidfire drumming and heavy-duty riffage. The complexity of the compositions is no obstacle to accessibility though, and I find myself dizzy by the musicianship and the brilliantly counter-intuitive ways in which the tracks evolve and veer, often wildly from one moment and one movement to the next. Even the Irish jigs on speed that feature on 'Impala' and 'Great Railroads' somehow work. On the latter track, it gives way to a melancholic lone piano, that is in turn buried under a deluge of three guitars, dense, scorching and weighty.
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Fittingly, they save the most monumental and truly epic aural journey for last. 'Hollow Depth', with a running time of over ten minutes, encapsulates the album’s diversity and dynamic range perfectly. After a succession of math-rock manoeuvres that would leave many scratching their heads as to how they got from A to B, the song takes a turn for the heavy, a doomy power-chord cutting through everything before overdriven prog mayhem breaks loose and puts the listener in a complete spin.
Considering I saw Talons a few months back and considered them to be merely 'interesting', an above-average post-rock band, I have to admit to being pleasantly surprised by 'Hollow Realm'. They were playing on front of the stage and weren't very loud on that occasion, and I think the sound would have suffered considerably on account of that. This is an album that needs to be played loud, in order for the sounds to breathe and to mesh together. Do it.
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