Hellfire

I feel like this album is a weird one for me. Don't get me wrong, I think this album is still amazing, howevery favourite albums are those that essentially are ones which I enjoy on a casual listen and also on a more in depth listen. Where this album falls apart for me is the casual listening experience.

The good stuff out of the way first, this album sounds like the most amazing musical theatre soundtrack to a play that doesn't exist. Everything is intricate and wild enough to be interesting without just becoming a cacophany of sound, the way the tension across each song rises and falls just from the instrumentals is masterful.

The theatrics get kicked up to eleven on the lyrical and of this album though, in which, on a general basis, starts as a slightly out of left field situation, the "greatest boxing match of the century", a horse race, a funeral, a ship of men stranded at sea. These situations all dramaticall go south as weirder, more supernatural things begin occuring. I won't spoil every track, but my favourite has to be 27 questions, the aforementioned funeral, where the dead man comes back to life and asks approximately 27 questions of the funeral-goers, some mundane and some philosophical, before being cut off by his stomach inflating like a balloon as he flies away and the funeral-goers simply laugh home.

Where this album ends up falling apart at times is the more casual experience. I don't mean "this album is extremely wankery" or anything, I mean sometimes, also similar to a musical, the tracks often dive into epilogues or other final portions which are very hit or miss. The biggest offenders for me are Still and The Race is About to Begin, where I feel like the song is starting musically and narratively overstay its welcome. From a casual listening perspective, these moments just kill the pacing and it makes keeping focus somewhat difficult, even if they are still good elements. While these don't knock the album down very significantly in my book, it means that I need to be in a very specific frame of mind to listen to the album.

Overall, this album is a great experience, it's amazing instrumentally while still feeling accessible and catchy. However, some small moments tend to drag the album down in a few moments.