Mindwork returned after fourteen years of silence — a short EP in 2021 doesn’t change the picture — and «Adrift» is the most ambitious thing they have done. Behind the title hides a concept about Alzheimer’s disease: the loss of memory, the dissolution of identity, the breaking of the mind into pieces that don’t stick back together.
Country: Czechia
Genre: Progressive Metal, Progressive Death Metal
For fans of: Cynic, Rivers of Nihil, Opeth, Persefone
Nine tracks, forty minutes, with the heaviest ones also the longest: «The Great Deception of Mind», «Mess from Now On», «The Party’s Over». In between fit the opening «Adrift», «Breach the Cosmos», «A Moment of Clarity», «Solitary Man», the short «The Branches and the Wind and the Rain» and the closing «Stars».
The band consists of Martin Schuster on vocals and guitars (and on the piano of «The Branches and the Wind and the Rain»), Dominik Vozobule on bass, Filip Kittnar on drums and Jiří Rambousek on lead guitars. On «The Great Deception of Mind» and «Mess from Now On» Martin Plachý’s saxophone is added. The album came out independently, with no label behind it.
Our take
Where «Adrift» soars is in the instruments. The guitars have the drive and the solos one would expect from a band that loves Persefone — «Breach the Cosmos» and «A Moment of Clarity» are the best examples, with solos that burn. The drums move comfortably between prog and jazz, with the vocoder of «A Moment of Clarity» winking at Cynic, while the bass takes a starring role: on «The Great Deception of Mind» it converses with the solo, and on «Mess from Now On» it digs with a technical death sound under the blast beats.
The problem is the vocals. The clean parts are the album’s weakest point: dull timbre, pronunciation that gets lost, and a distance from the level of the musicians that isn’t justified. The habit with the saxophones is annoying too — two smooth jazz solos, two winks at the most worn-out prog cliché. On «Mess from Now On», which could be the best track, the singing stops for a two-minute saxophone passage and loses all its momentum.
There’s also the matter of style: «The Branches and the Wind and the Rain» is essentially Opeth’s «Patterns in the Ivy» under another name, and the Swedes’ influences show in many riffs. Next to these, the closing with «Stars» passes without leaving anything — strange, for an album that speaks of such a heavy subject and would ask for the exact opposite.
We keep the performances and the compositional boldness: two decades after their first release, Mindwork play like a band that has a lot to say. «Adrift» though doesn’t reach the emotion its concept promises, and with two or three less easy decisions it could be much stronger.
Find them
- Bandcamp: mindwork.bandcamp.com/album/adrift
- Facebook: mindwork
- Instagram: mindwork.official
- Label: Independent
See also: Epitaphe – III | Opeth – The Last Will & Testament.
