The power-progressive trio COMMUNIC from Kristiansand, Norway have been going strong for nearly 2 decades and after a bit of a wait, have released their newest effort "Hiding from the World". The band was founded nearly 2 decades ago in March 2003, initially as a side project from guitarist and singer Oddleif Stensland and drummer Tor Atle Andersen's progressive metal band SCARIOT. A bandmate of Stensland from INGERMANDLAND - itself an initial outlet for Stensland's personal music before problems with the name forced them to disband - soon joined them and they recorded their demo "Conspiracy in Mind". It was selected as "Demo of the Month" by the magazine Rock Hard They were picked up by Nuclear Blast and would further expand that demo into a full-length LP in 2005. That partnership would see them through their next 3 albums - "Waves of Visual Decay" in 2006, "Payment of Existence in 2008, and "The Bottom Deep" in 2011. They would break from Nuclear Blast in 2017 to sign with AFM Records in time for the release of their fifth album, "Where Echoes Gather".

Only two years after their previous album, the band got back to work on their sixth release in early 2019. Ideas were already in place when the band did some preliminary recording during a long weekend in a cabin by the shore of a southern fjord in their wonderful country of Norway. From that isolation, they emerged with an album title and enough material to start pre-production at Stensland's "Stoneland Studio". Drum recording was just beginning to be laid down when the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic hit and recording halted. Slowly they restarted the process to finish recording in early March 2020. Stensland commented, "the songs are quite diverse but true to the COMMUNIC style we started out doing back in 2003. There are some mellow and emotional, yet heavy songs, some really heavy songs, even some blast beats, stuff that we have never done before. I wrote these songs with a feeling inside that my life could end tomorrow, this could be the last thing I leave behind as my legacy." The title seems to reflect that - "Hiding From the World" - and while it was decided before 2020 really got going, it seems to fit the topsy-turvy year that it was released in.

Unfortunately, despite quite a legacy of music that the band made over the last 17 years, I feel that they are never going to appeal to a more mainstream audience and continue to attract fans with a particular hunger for their style. Constantly compared to similarly sounding NEVERMORE, the band insist on bloated track times that are fun and exciting for the first 4-5 minutes but become monotonous and repetitive as the tracks go on. Even my favorite track "Born Without a Heart" - the longest track of the album, by the way - is not deserving of its 10 minute runtime. It has an operatic, majestic main riff in the vein of ICED EARTH or RAMMSTEIN, its extremely catchy, and got stuck in my head. Unfortunately, it may be because it was repeated so many times throughout the song that it was hard to forget. It also contains a riff very reminiscent in the climbing, building riff from METALLICA's "The Call of Ktulu" so it may have endeared itself harder on me based on familiarity. But I was avoiding a re-listen just based on the 60 minute runtime across only 8 tracks. I do not want to rip on the band too much, I love STENSLAND's Daniel Gildenlow/Geoff Tate vocal delivery and unique doubling, his flawless guitar work and the monster rhythm section of Anderson and Mortensen. The last two tracks paired together is quite genius and softened my harsh buzz from the repetitiveness of previous tracks. The penultimate track "Soon to Be" serves as a vocal-less opening track to "Forgotten" in which we move tenuously between two tonal centers with the sounds of children playing in the background. It leads right into the sorrowful and despairing "Forgotten" in which a man chooses not to remember the good times and only remembers the bad. It's an epic 3 guitar solo ending to what should be a grand collection of songs, but still left me empty. If only they could be a bit more discerning about the length of tracks, trim a little fat and they might have a made a fan out of me.