The Safety Fire
Mouth of Swords

Every since I reviewed the debut album of this british band, I have been looking forward to this new release. That album was a great showcase of creativity and soul, it also had a great looking cover artwork and the name Grind the Ocean is a fairly good title as well. This new album is called Mouth of Swords and does not have a good looking cover artwork, but of course it features a more mature and experienced band. Sure it has only passed one and a half year since the debut but that would be enough to see some evolvement in the musical department.

It is intricate melodies, exciting variations, vocals that range from angry growls to clean choruses. It is well put together, coherent yet varied, heavy, soft, all in between but maybe more towards the extremer side than the more standard progressive side. I think that it is more coherent and it sound more mature than the previous album, in a way it feels like a natural progression of the debut. It is really well produced and the sound is excellent, it is a well sounding album. I would conclude that this is a well performed album and well written, I would say that it is a progression in all regards of the musical creation. The songs feels more written as a whole, not with “cool” things just thrown in just because it could be creatively interesting. It feels more grown up.

As I alluded to before, this album is a progression in almost every aspect. It is much better produced than the debut, it is much more coherent, the vocals are much better, the songs feels more thought out, but for some reason it is not better. I was thinking about why that was which led me to play through the album a few more time creating a tally of eighteen plays and in the end I concluded that this album lacks something that the last album had. It had soul, it felt like the band put heart and soul behind the debut album. It was flawed and imperfect in many ways but it was brilliant because of that, this album lacks that in my opinion and it feels mature, it feels grown up. It feels made to fit a certain form, the foundation that they laid in the debut, kind of like they are copying themselves and improving most parts but music needs a soul in order to be great and I don’t think this album has one.

The opening title track I think should have worked well on the debut album, but I do not think any of the other tracks are as good as the ones on the debut album. I guess that you now think that I am dismissing this album and that I don’t think it is any good but that is a misinterpretation as I do think it is a good album, just not as good as I had hoped for. I was hoping for something more outrageous than the debut something even more intricate, this is a clinical work and it is intricate and requires some playing to get into completely but it is also always taking the safest route with strict adherence to a set format. In all the improving they did for this album it seems like something got lost in the process. I would say that those who liked the debut will most likely like this one as well but maybe not as much. To me Grind the Ocean is still the go to album when it comes to these guys, lets see if they can realise the potential I heard in that album in the future.

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