It’s hard not to sound like a pretentious, musical snobby doucheface while reviewing a band like Pelican, but I’ll do my best. Pelican is, after all, what I believe to be one of the smarter bands that can roughly be identified as metal. And I say roughly because it’s been their instrumental approach that has opened the doors for them to explore a wide variety of musical emotions and atmospheres. If you’ve heard other post-rock/metal bands, then you’re in good company. With no new LPs in about 4 years, Forever Becoming gives fans reassurance that Pelican can still weave their musical stories as stunningly as before.
When you have a band with common rock band instrumentation but with no vocalist, like Pelican, the songs can sometimes run into the danger of being too repetitive or even too spacious without the contribution of a vocal melody. Luckily, Pelican never seemed to have considered this much of a problem while they write. And it shows perhaps in it’s greatest in Forever Becoming.
From the get-go, the album sucks you in and doesn’t let you go. The second track, “Deny the Absolute” is about as metal as this album gets. The other tracks either build themselves from energetic riffs or some atmospheric melody. Much like other Pelican albums, each of the songs feel like little journeys in themselves, which contribute to the entire album being the full journey. The tracks are unique and distinctive but follow similar and familiar trends throughout the album.
As to be expected, some of these tracks can be pretty long. The songs aren’t like progressive metal songs where there isn’t really a main idea and things keep changing at every turn. Forever Becoming’s tracks really keep their character while still altering and varying here and there to keep it fresh.
“Vestiges” is probably the best example of a track where the main musical ideas basically stay the same throughout the duration of the song. But so many different treatments happen to that same musical idea, and while they might be variations of each other, it keeps that one idea new with every change it makes. You don’t feel like you’re listening to a 7+ minute song, you just keep listening for the next thing.
And that’s almost the best way to sum up the rest of the songs as well: while I was listening to the album for the first time, I eventually stopped paying attention to the song lengths, because it didn’t really matter. Even the closer, “Perpetual Dawn”, with a runtime of about 9 minutes didn’t seem that long, and in fact ended up being one of my favorites on the album.
Not long after the release of their 2012 EP, Ataraxia/Taraxis, longtime guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec amicably parted ways with the band. Soon, Dallas Thomas from The Swan King stepped in to fill in Schroeder-Lebec’s live, and eventually full-time position in Pelican, and also contributed to the writing process of Forever Becoming.
According to guitarist Trevor de Brauw, some of the album’s themes stem from the events of Schroeder-Lebec’s departure, which also explains some of the more intense and darker feels in the album. Not that it’s a depressing album, but the moods evoked from the music definitely don’t make me want to frolic in the tulips. Every mood created is quite vivid; some of the worst emotions have felt exactly like some of these songs. And they all accomplish their goal of being this dramatic journey in each of the songs, and in the whole of Forever Becoming.
If you’re familiar with Pelican’s career and their style of music, then this is all going to be quite usual for you; but that isn’t to say it’s a bad thing. Forever Becoming is another step in the musical excursion that is Pelican, and it brings you to environments and atmospheres like where they have brought you before. If you’ve never actually listened to Pelican before, I’d highly recommend giving them a try, and letting Forever Becoming being your introduction.
