Album Review: Grant The Sun - Sur Jupiter
Reviewed by Carl Black
There are a couple of ways you can view and listen to this album. The first is as an instrumental, titanic, riff driven, percussion pounding, progressive sonic sandwich with two epic songs bookending two shorter tunes. The other is not as a four track EP, but as a seventeen/eighteen minute piece of music that lets your imagination run wild and free and brings you back home again. Either way it’s a great listen that left me wanting more.
The EP starts off with 'Dans I’Espace', a two sided song showing the lighter and heavier side of the band. The atmospheric soundscape takes you on a journey. This is perpetuated by the train station like announcements that bind all of these tracks together. It reminds me of being on the Eurostar platform and waiting for the 8.13 direct into Paris. I’m sure the translation is very mystic or thought provoking but as I don’t speak the ol François I’ll just have to take a guess. Which makes it all the more fun.
The next two songs, 'Tempete D’Astroides' and 'Arrivee Dangereuse' are shorter songs that follow the same vain as the heavier parts of 'Dans I’Espace'. But the EP is only getting warm. The tour de force is the final chapter of this story. 'Sur Jupiter' is a classic song. Heavy and progressive, this seven-minute opus builds up to a simple, chugging riff, and guitar solo layered on top which is reminiscent of the Meshuggah we all know and love.
It’s an engaging listen and a fantastic introduction to the band. I hear 'Sur Jupiter' being played on the last half hour of the Radio One Rock Show with Dan P. Carter. I can also see them on the bill at Desert fest in London. The future is bright for Grant the Sun. I’m really hoping for a full length album of this quality is on the horizon.
Grant The Sun release 'Sur Jupiter' via 'Mas Kina Recordings' on December 20th.
