SUBSCRIBE – Bookmarks

Shane | 12 September 2012 | Reply

Zene360/EMI, 2011
By Shane Pinnegar
9/10

If it’s stunning, unique progressive metal you’re looking for, then go no further than Hungarian sextet SUBSCRIBE. Together since 1999, this is their third full length album – and although that doesn’t seem like a particularly strong work ethic, they are apparently huge in their home country, and music this involving and engrossing and intricate takes time to put together!

Open the wrapping and the first thing to strike you is that “bookmarks” is beautifully packaged like a – you guessed it – hard cover book! There’s original artwork to accompany each song’s lyrics, which are mostly in English, but not exclusively, and a bonus DVD with an hour long collection of “making of” snippets and general fooling around which suffers a little from not having a coherent thread to it, but it’s certainly as HDAD as Subscribe’s music and gives you a good sense of the bands friendly dynamic and “having fun being serious musos” recording process. There’s also an abundance of extras for the serious fan.

Bookmarks is an intense listening experience – like a progressive hardcore metal Frank Zappa orchestral piece, they flit from melodic rock to jazzy lounge crooning to metalcore and death metal and even a smattering of traditional Eastern European folk music from time to time… often all within the same song! The most straightforward song on the album, Miles Away, is a beautiful piano and vocal ballad which alone is worth the price of admission – the rest is just gravy!

I suppose if we had to make comparisons of such a stridently unique musical force, we could cite System Of A Down as one reference point, throw in some Radiohead and a pinch of the atmospherics of Pink Floyd, the progressiveness of Porcupine Tree, the aforementioned eclecticism and uniqueness of Zappa and – there’s no point, this is purely original music that answers to no-one, and like the very best and most influential music throughout time, it is designed to please only the artists themselves, yet should reach a well-deserved and widespread cult following due to the sheer quality of the work.

Consider me a convert – why aren’t you?

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