While most of us spent our time during the lock-down much less productively, RAGE IN MY EYES (formerly SCELERATA) went back to the studio, and got to work. Returning to us with what could easily be construed as an undeserved reward for our months of cabin-fever, and sloth (yes, I know you were working at home in your pajama bottoms...if you were even clothed). RAGE IN MY EYES arises reborn from the drudgery of artificially-imposed shut-downs, to bestow upon us Spiral!

This EP was a bit of a treat for me. Eclectic is a word I'd use to describe it. Musically, I'd put it somewhere around ANNIHILATOR, and MEGADETH (the Marty Friedman years). The opening "Farewell" completely exemplifies this band's tendency to grab you by your spirit of adventure, and take you with them. You won't really catch it until somewhere around 50 seconds into the track before you even suspect, that you are now in fact, in the presence of dragons. "And Then The Storm Came", and all doubt was pretty well lost. I was certain that this band had crafted something unique, and substantial.  The beginning of the song is slow, almost proud/victorious as it comes in. By 30 seconds into the song, I get a feeling like I'm going full-gallop into battle! I'm not the best at identifying song structure to begin with, but with breakdowns within breakdowns, and verses that just seemed to travel, and meander about, I just kind of gave up, and gave in to the charging rhythm underlying all of it.

Although these guys hail from Porto Alegre Brazil, but to me the beginning of "Spark Of Hope" has a really Italian feel to it. I don't know, it's probably something about my own associations with the accordion, and the way it's employed in this song. I feel like I'm in a coastal restaurant in Italy, being serenaded by the house band... 9 AM, Eggs over easy, croissant, Mimosa, a nice view over the bay, the smell of ocean air, and live metal accordion....how better to start the day?  The next three songs,  victorious, triumphant, strident, and confident were all words that came to mind. Francis' drums are fantastic throughout. On a work like this, I hate trying to break it down to one participant's contribution, because it was all awesome! If you were to take any one of the players, and compare them to another musician, from another band, that would be the fairest way to judge the work, but even taking time to talk about Francis's drums feels a little like I'm betraying the rest of the band. Just the same, to me drums, and how a player goes about the assignment are crucial to my enjoyment of a band's music.

In this case, I felt he was so together, even on beats he wasn't present on. A competent drummer should provide a beat, play skeletal versions of the other player's parts, and do it with an identity/voice of their own. Francis does it all like we're hearing the feed directly from his mind, while he's sitting at a computer, shit-posting on Twitter, binge-watching something on Hulu...#Multitasking. Swept together with the rest of the band, it gave me this constant sense of motion. Like, we're going somewhere, we're doing it because we believe in what we're doing, and there isn't anything that can stop us from getting there! I didn't really compare this work to other bands, because it was in fact new territory for me. Intensity wise, I would put it up there with WITHIN THE RUINS, but there were parts that were like RUSH. Elegant, and far too cultured for such an association.  I did get a little reminder of ANNIHILATOR ("Word Salad") on parts of "Dare To Defy", but it was just little bits of the song. The phrasing, and verse lengths reminded me a lot of MESHUGGAH, in that made it a little more difficult for me to discern between parts of the song-structure. All so complex, and yet so simple, that the entire musical DNA of the EP is expressed within the first 2 minutes. "Farewell".