Album Review: Communic - Hiding From The World

Communic has always been one of those bands that sounds like they try a bit too hard. It started right out of the gate, when their first albums were chock full of Nevermore-esque songs that regularly stretched from seven to ten minutes long. Even on their magnificent "Waves Of Visual Decay", songs persisted longer than they perhaps should have. That makes Communic a band that takes patience to listen to, which came to a crashing halt on their previous record, where the length struggled to justify itself across multi-part songs that didn't need to be segmented, songs that weren't interesting enough to spend that much time with.

That dynamic comes into play once again, with the shortest of the non-segue tracks clocking in only a few seconds under seven minutes. With the band being only a trio of guitar/bass/drums, that's a lot of time to fill with a limited sonic palate. Nothing has changed about their sound, which still features a mixture of chugging riffs and baritone vocals. There's an inherent drama to their sound, which is the saving grace that can carry them through these lengthy songs.

This album gets them back on track towards their glory days. The construction here features stronger melodic writing, and more than a dash of the formula that made "Waves Of Visual Decay" so great. This album sounds more like that one than any that have come since, which is a more than welcome development to my ears. Communic is able to balance almost thrashy sections with laid-back ones, letting the album ebb and flow with a more natural feeling than some of their other works.

So what we have here is an album of two perspectives. On the one hand, "Hiding From The World" is a successful album that hits all the right marks for Communic. It's full of heavy riffs and solid songwriting. On the other hand, the album is incredibly similar to what has come before. That doesn't bother everyone, and it doesn't always bother me either, but there are certainly passages on this record where I can hear in my mind songs from "Waves Of Visual Decay" picking up where they leave off.

If you don't mind more of the same, Communic's latest offering is a very good album. This one rights some of the problems I've had with the last couple, and is close to the band being at their absolute best. I'm still going to hold to the opinion that "Waves Of Visual Decay" is their best album, but this could very well slot in behind that. That's nothing to slouch at, so there's no complaining going on here. "Hiding From The World" is a fine addition late in the year.