Morrigu

The Niobium Sky

Inoffensive display of competence | Dark Balance

There’s a lot on Morrigu’s second full-length that’s done right. The Swiss band’s sound straddles the melodic crunch of Soilwork, the Warped Tour-friendly post-hardcore of Thrice, and the progressive rock strains of Dredg and Porcupine Tree, all done very competently, and presented in an über-slick package courtesy of Tue Madsen. Yet, the more we try to dig into this seemingly accessible slice of forward-thinking heavy music, the more that damned slickness keeps it from sticking. For all the quintet’s efforts, for all the competent performances, in the end it’s just in one ear, out the other.

It’s a real shame, because this should work. To the band’s detriment, despite a plethora of melodies, be they from smooth-voiced Sevi Binder or guitarists Viktor Lienhard and Marc Fürer, there’s an equally staggering dearth of genuine hooks, the music having about as much staying power as those brittle sticks of bubblegum from baseball card packs. We do get a handful of close calls early on, perhaps because the repetition of The Niobium Sky hasn’t yet settled in. “Black Dust” is awash in graceful symphonic synths, Merlin Sutter laying down a lithe polyrhythmic groove as Binder’s voice soars, the streamlined hard rock of “Against the Sun” boasts the record’s most hummable melody, while the In Flames-ish “Wallow in the Past” sees the band kicking it into moderately high gear, alternating from Colony-style ferocity and Clayman-esque accessibility. By the time the overwrought “At the Gathering of Stars” rolls around, though, our initial hope has long since turned to numbness.

—Adrien Begrand

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