May 2023 Featured Album - The Gateway Edition

A new month means new featured albums and for the month of May, I have selected the brand new album from the French band Klone called Meanwhile. I really enjoyed this album on my first few playthroughs and hit a quasi progressive spot that was lacking on the new Katatonia record. I hope you guys will check this out and let us know what you think.

https://metal.academy/releases/42701

I did my review, here's its summary:

Klone has quite some brooding atmosphere in their music. Seeing how this band made 7 albums including this one in nearly two decades, I'm stunned by how little attention they've received, so much so that I haven't even heard of this band until now. Their new album Meanwhile shall keep you engaged to its technical emotion. Guitars and bass sweep nicely under the powerful vocal harmonies of Yann Linger. The songs each have an average length of over 5 minutes, while making interesting subtle changes in time signatures. The band can really have some confidence and control when it comes to that ability. And in the more complex parts, you can let go of any expectations and witness the unexpected magic happen. With this mournful yet powerful blend of guitars, bass, and vocals, Meanwhile shows how grand progressive alt-rock/metal can be. Despite a bit of hauling in a few tracks, you know how much confidence the band has when experimenting with darkness and light....

4/5

Klone are yet another band I have been blissfully unaware of until now. Meanwhile is the latest of the band's eight albums and is quite a nice album of progressive alternative metal. The band are very accomplished musicians, obviously, and their sound is highly polished, as is their songwriting, for me a little too polished. At first this sounded great, but as the album proceeded it felt so controlled that it came over like it was lacking in character and more than once I wished that the band would just let rip and let themselves go. Although it sounds quite proggy it doesn't really contain any extended instrumental sections, in the vein of a band like Riverside, which would make the whole a lot more interesting. As it is, it just sounds like an exceedingly professional collection of songs that pass by without me being able to make any emotional connection with, other than in a chin-stroking admiration for their musical adroitness, but that isn't enough for me to return to a record. Although I do genuinely admire the band's skill, I am unable to engage with Meanwhile on an emotional level, so no, it isn't really for me I'm afraid.

2.5/5

I came into this record with no knowledge of Klone as a band either. I had just finished listening to the new Katatonia record Sky Void of Stars from earlier in the year and found it rather disappointing overall. Meanwhile, conversely, does not really seem like a record that is doing a whole lot different than a recent Katatonia album, but has its fair share of subtle deviances that snowball on one another to stand out amongst the influences. I, like Sonny, do feel like the album does get a little bit too comfortable at the halfway point, and Klone do not really seem super invested on developing their story beyond what has already been established on the first two songs. But the progressive tendencies are well executed, once again, the Katatonia influence is here in droves, but it doesn't sound like "another Katatonia album" and it features some excellent production, especially in the guitar leads.

4/5