envy – Eunoia (Review)

It should come as no surprise that we love envy: from the great back-catalogue (here are our ten favorite songs so far) and their great last album The Fallen Crimson, they are just THAT good. So every time they announce a new album, my expectations soar to very high levels, levels only a few bands can reach.

One of the first things that I always do, is checking the tracklist, especially the length of the album as a whole. In their career envy evolved through several stages, from their Screamo beginnings, to full-on Post-Rock to finally something wonderful in between. As I saw that the album would be clocking in around the 30 minute-mark I assumed that envy would speed up thing a little again.

After the calm “Piecemeal“, the opener “Imagination and Creation” proves this hypothesis instantly. My initial reaction was that it reminded me of Atheist’s Cornea‘s “Blue Moonlight“. It is like opening a curtain after a short opening speech by a director. The urgency, the haste, the proclamation “I’m here again” or better “I’m still here after 30 years” is full on.

The following “The Night and the Void” is the Post-Rock-waltz-dance you would expect and hope for. Once again it is like stepping into a big scenery with Mother Nature being the only one to guide you. “Beyond the Raindrops” is another “classic” envy so to speak. A massive wall of sound and delicate synth-layers combined with Tetsuya Fukagawa‘s vocals that sound like as if he recited a poem.

Although being a short affair, there is so much to stylistically uncover. The double of “Lingering Light” and ” Lingering Echoes” is a neat recitation (every pun intended) of the electronic influences that are woven in into envy’s sound. Almost seamlessly it fades from a flickering to a burning song.

Eunoia succeeds in keeping on par with the great body of work of envy. For a band being roughly 30 years into their existence it is more than astounding that there are no steep valleys in their discography. One meaning of Eunoia is “beautiful thinking”. envy have been doing this all the time while bridging the gap between heart and mind.