Album Review: Crown Lands - Apocalypse

Over the years, I have described Dan Swano's album "Moontower" as 'if Rush played death metal' (I didn't invent the phrase, mind you), which has stuck with me as one of those phrases that seems too absurd to be true. It is, and every once in a while I run across something that cannot be explained in a way that doesn't sound utterly ridiculous without hearing the context. Today is one of those days, as there is only one thing I could think of when I played this album:

This is what it would sound like if Guns N Roses was a pop/prog band.

Yes, I know that sentence doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's the best way I can describe the basics of Crown Lands. Their sound is a combination of 70s prog riffing with 80s prog pop sensibility, capped off with vocals that sound like Axl Rose during his 'helium voice' period. It's utterly bizarre to wrap your head around, as something about the combination of sounds doesn't feel like it should work in the slightest, and yet... it does.

The songs leading up to the closing epic are tightly constructed, and do a fine job of balancing rock swagger with hooky accessibility. There is some 80s Rush in the sound, and maybe even a bit of yacht rock, but they are overwhelmingly entertaining songs. If they are cheesy, it's the type of cheese the band is well aware of, and melting into a silky fondue. I don't know if anyone can sing in this register and believe they can be taken seriously.

During the long wait for "Chinese Democracy", it was said Axl always wanted to be Elton John as much as he did a sleazy rock star. Crown Lands sound like what would happen if Axl's influence was 70s prog instead. It's a far more interesting perspective and 'what if' than Axl gave us with his industrial and electronic fascinations. The only place where it goes wrong is on the penultimate "The Revenants", which is more of a Zeppelin styled folk song, and happens to have the flattest and least interesting melody on the record. That the song goes absolutely nowhere doesn't help.

That journey is saved for the nineteen minute title track, which shifts its tone from moment to moment, trying to sum up and condense everything about the band into a single defining statement. It does that to a degree, but it suffers from the same problem a lot of prog bands fall victim to; the epic track is long, but not epic. Too often, these bands build their greatest statement from lesser parts, and trust that the size alone will be enough to set the narrative. That doesn't work for me, because I'm not impressed by the number of ideas you can stitch together one after the other if none of them leave an impression on me. The art of songwriting isn't amassing ideas, it's about creating great ones. There aren't nineteen minutes of them in this song.

That leaves me in a difficult position when it comes to telling you what I think about this album, because I'm torn. On the one hand, I find the first four full tracks strangely fascinating. If the album was fleshed out with more songs that continued that trend, I would be calling this an underdog contender for surprise of the year. The last two tracks, though, are half the record that finds the momentum running headlong into a brick wall. I can't say I enjoy those much at all. So are four short songs enough to recommend an album?

Yes and no. I can't tell you it's enough to want to revisit this as a whole, but I do think it's worth hearing the songs once just for the way it messes with your mind.