Mountain Caller

Some cool new music I found recently through Apple Music. Mountain Caller hail from the UK and have been playing music the past few years. As always I am late to the party, but that’s sort of good actually.  I listened to one track out of curiosity and ended up sitting there for about two hours listening to both albums back to back. A few days later I’d ordered them both on vinyl, which is usually inevitable when I like something. These days I try and order through Bandcamp if something isn’t available locally. Bandcamp is generally pretty excellent, and the one time there was a hiccup with a band not sending me what they should have, they sorted it out really quickly. 
What I like about Mountain Caller is that they avoid a lot of the stuff that makes instrumental heavy music feel a bit exhausting. There’s no endless showing off, no “look how clever this riff is” energy. Everything feels really purposeful, heavy and atmospheric, but still grounded as human. The music actually goes somewhere instead of just existing as a wall of sound. They’re sort of a super heavy prog band really.

Chronicle I: The Truthseeker has this huge sense of scale to it. It sounds like wandering through some abandoned sci-fi world at the end of civilisation. Massive riffs, lots of space and a lot of atmosphere, but it never disappears into background music either. The heavy parts stand out and have awesome impact because the band know when to hold back and let things breathe.

What is impressive is how memorable it all is. Instrumental records can sometimes blur together after a while, but this one really has enough interesting variation to capture you. Certain melodies and sections keep coming back into your head afterwards, which isn’t something I say often about post-metal records, a lot of which I find quite boring. The vinyl is a cool cream colour, that actually almost perfectly matches my 301 chassis.

Chronicle II: Hypergenesis somehow manages to sound even bigger without losing what made the first album good. Its more confident and more immersive, like the band realised they could push the whole cinematic side of their sound even further. There’s still lots of weight to it, but also has moments that are genuinely beautiful without sounding soft or sentimental.

I also really like that neither album sounds overly polished. There’s texture to them. A lot of modern heavy music sounds so clean and perfect now that it ends up completely lifeless, but these records still feel physical and alive. Some engineers overwork the process, but these albums sound almost like they were done live in one take, which is great. This one is a nice white/blue mix of vinyl.

They make sense on vinyl, because they feel like albums you’re supposed to properly sit down and listen to completely. Big artwork, full side-long journeys, the whole thing, with nice quiet pressings too. I did put them into new outer sleeves and some fancy pants MA Recordings Micro Fibre sleeves. I don’t think they’re available anymore, which is a real shame because they are by far the best inner sleeves you could buy. These guys (well, two girls and one guy) are up there with my other favourite post-metal band, Russian Circles, as good examples of interesting modern heavy music.