Caligula’s Horse – Charcoal Grace (Album Review)
Caligula’s Horse – Charcoal Grace
Released: January 26th, 2024
Lineup:
Jim Grey // Vocals
Sam Vallen // Guitars
Josh Griffin // Drums
Dale Prinsse // Bass
Online:
It’s hard to get your head around just how stunning this album is. The fact that it is Caligula’s Horse’s sixth album in 12 years, and that each album has been as good or better than the last, is even more difficult to comprehend. This album is everything imaginable you could ever want from a C-Horse album and more. It takes everything they put into their previous five albums (all of which were prodigious epics in their own right) and expands it, extends it, adds to it, evolves it, and does so in a completely seamless and cohesive manner.
In fact, Charcoal Grace is everything you could ever want from a melodic progressive rock/metal album.
It is expansive and ambitious, way above and beyond the call of duty. It is highly dynamic, being heavy and bombastic where it needs to be, while regularly pulling back to soothing moments of sweet and swooning ambience that are simply beautiful. The compositions are breathtaking in their breadth and highly intelligent and skilful in their execution. And the musicianship and production are beyond exemplary. All wrapped up in a package that is deliciously digestible to open-minded listeners the world over.
The C-Horse truly brought their A+ game on this one.
If you keep an eye on things online (and who doesn’t?), you’ll constantly see a heap of slogans and cliches being reeled out and regurgitated about modern music, by people who have no idea what they’re talking about – such as ‘there’s no good music around today, only the old stuff is any good!’ and ‘the album format is dead!’ This album makes a total mockery of all of these ignorant cliches.
It also flies directly in the face of the need for easily accessible three-minute songs for the vacuous consumption of people with goldfish-level attention spans. This band has extended a big, fat middle finger to these conventions and expectations and done whatever the fuck they wanted – ‘why don’t we open the album with a ten-minute epic, craft a title track that is a multi-part, multi-faceted 24-minute work of theatrical musical art, and close with a track that’s two minutes longer than the opener? Yeah, why not, and to hell with what the industry wants.’
There is no real point in singling out individual tracks for recognition here, Charcoal Grace is an end-to-end album experience. It must be listened to, start to finish, in one sitting, to truly be appreciated. There is also no point in pointing to any individual member, this band is a unit. Suffice it is to say that Messrs Grey, Vallen, Griffin and Prinsse are all in world-class form.
Charcoal Grace further cements this band’s position among the true greats of global progressive rock and metal music. This band is now flying the flag, maybe not solo, but alongside a far smaller handful of bands, for Australian progressive music across the world. Many of the bands that helped form that freakish Aussie progressive scene of the late 2000s and into the early 2010s are defunct, on indefinite hiatus or still running but doing so at a far reduced capacity than they were during those heady, intoxicating peak times. For this reason alone, you need to get behind the C-Horse.
Of course, the main reason to do so is that they are a world-class act, and Charcoal Grace should, if there is any justice in the musical world, be viewed in hindsight as one of the all-time great progressive rock/metal albums. Not just by an Australian band, but by any band.
It may be January, but please remember this album come December when you are doing your ‘best albums of 2024’ list. For me, it will take something pretty damn special to knock this from the number one perch. Big, very early call I know, but there it is.
Get this album now, in whichever way and on whatever format you can, and listen the fuck out of it. Thank me later . . .
Caligula’s Horse – Charcoal Grace tracklisting
- The World Breathes With Me
2. Golem
3. Charcoal Grace I: Prey
4. Charcoal Grace II: A World Without
5. Charcoal Grace III: Vigil
6. Charcoal Grace IV: Give Me Hell
7. Sails
8. The Stormchaser
9. Mute
Rating: 9.5/10
Charcoal Grace is out now. Get it here
Review by Rod Whitfield (@Rod_Whitfield)
Learn more about the album through our chat with Jim Grey and Josh Griffin here