Rýr
Transient

The Icelandic word for barren has given name to this band of Germans, an interesting name. Transient is their second album, and it certainly looks rather interesting with a photo cover that is kind of an illustration of the grey and dull world of today. I wonder if they can make music that is as interesting. I note on their bandcamp site that they feel the need to write that they are against racism, homophobia and Sexism. You would think that anyone would be against that, and it goes without saying – but look at Europe today, in my own nation Sweden we have a party that kind of has sexism, homophobia and especially racism as the leading values of their party and about 20% of the population voted for them. Yeah, Swedes are idiots, it goes without saying, unfortunately it isn’t much better elsewhere. So perhaps everyone should copy Rýr and say that they are against those primitive ideas. Anyway, it wasn’t their value as humans I was to review but rather how good their second album is.

It is a post-metal album that is instrumental, and I read plenty of comparisons with Russian Circles and Pelican. I also note that I don’t find it to be a fresh and exciting sounding album – perhaps not extremely derivative but quite a lot. What they do really well is how they structure the songs, never am I missing a vocal component, and that is a bit unusual as instrumental bands often tend to give the feeling of missing the voice. So, they do many things rather well, they vary their album, the atmospheres are great, it should be fairly easy to like.

It not anything outstanding though, I find myself not really thinking of this album as anything memorable. Rather the opposite. It seems as another one of those where the band is too afraid to fail so they do their best to avoid standing out at all, and thus making themselves irrelevant. It is a typical musical statement of the metal world today, no bravery, no fresh ideas, just another release destined to be fast forgotten. Why don’t they make the same musical statement as the one about racism, “against boring reusing of the same ideas over and over again” why aren’t more bands creative in nature? This is just another one of those albums that has me asking: are all musicians lacking imagination and fantasy?

This album is certainly lacking that, but it is not a bad album, I found it pleasing enough to listen to in my car for example. It is a fine album, just don’t expect anything memorable or exciting.

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