Product Description

Instrumental metal outfit 5ive mixes a healthy dose of psych into its pounding rock excursions, so that many of the songs on HESPERUS, the band's debut offering, are swirled by a dark, late-'60s psych vibe a la Black Sabbath or Iron Butterfly. But 5ive is no mere retro band: its metal muscle can crush skulls with the best of its brethren from the 2000s. Forfans of heavy psych, metal with shoegaze influence, and experimental metal, HESPERUS is definitely worth a listen.

Track Listing

1. Gulls
2. Big Sea
3. Kettle Cove
4. Heel
5. Polar
6. News I
7. News II

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #102027 in Music
• Released on: 2008-02-25
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .16 pounds

Customer Reviews

It's good. But 5ive are better than good
By the time it arrived, this album had been eagerly awaited by many a PsychDoomSpaceSludge-Head for a number of years. 5ive were always a favourite of mine because of how far they pushed their style out towards its own logical conclusion - endless, feedback-coma-inducing distorted jams of monstrous proportions. 'The Telestic Disfracture' was an epic headspace all of its own, and after 'The Hemophiliac Dream' EP (which no one seemed to notice was just a really whacked-out cover of Pink Floyd's "Set The Controls...") they all but disappeared for a few years.

'Hesperus' is their return. It's difficult to convey my surprise when I first heard it - it opens with sharp, machine-gun drum fills and fast, stoner-sludge riffage. "What's happened to 5ive?" I thought. The performance itself is as intense as ever - low, multi-frequency guitar notes scratch out the insides of your ears and the drums are pure kinetic energy - but the band seem to have suddenly imposed restrictions upon themselves. There are a couple of shorter tracks that are pleasant enough, but don't go anywhere. The album only really opens up to the extent of their previous works with 'News' and 'News II', two longer tracks that play to 5ive's strengths and manage to hit the high standards of the trance-state jams found on their first two Long Players.

It's a shame that somewhere along the line, 5ive decided they needed to start being concise. 'Hesperus' is by no means a bad album - on the contrary, taken on it own terms it's very good and showcases a number of diversities never previously explored by the duo. And it does, of course, rock. Very hard. But it feels like, by adopting stoner riffs and tighter dynamic changes, they're playing someone else's game. Before, they played their own game and they were the only winner. Consider the first reviewer's several Kyuss references - I love Kyuss, but 5ive should be in a different league entirely. (NB: "Different" in this context does not mean "better") They're in danger of sacrificing the experimentalism and emotional resonance, not to mention the sheer devastating heaviness, of their music.

'Hesperus' is still a really good album. 'The Telestic Disfracture' and '5ive' are mind-blowing. That's the difference.