Grinding to a menacing groove, fiery riffs collide into one another and form a blistering backbone for Atlas Cage to colorize with his vocal in the song “Not Over,” one of the three tracks found on his band Strings of Atlas’ new EP How Far We’ve Come, out everywhere quality indie metal and rock are sold and streamed this coming April. Cage is putting all his creative cards on the table in How Far We’ve Come; drawing influence from both his past works in Strings of Atlas and the scorched riffing of the stoner rock legends of yesteryear, he delivers the best fretting of the spring thus far here.
Throughout “Gone Away,” the title track and “Not Over,” the guitar parts feature some really enticing textures that express just as much to us as any of the lyrics do, but in “Gone Away” in particular, I think the acrylic nature of the melodies unfurls the moodiness behind the verses better than any words ever could have on their own. Strings of Atlas are about as far as you can get from the atmospheric post-metal of acts like Pelican before venturing outside of the realm of rock music altogether, but in How Far We’ve Come, they exhibit a surreal element in their songwriting that, at the very least, I’d never noticed before now.
Cage’s vocal could have used a little more volume in the title cut here, and while I can understand the sound he was trying to achieve in keeping it on an equilibrium with the strings, I think his singing deserved more attention in this track than it was ultimately afforded. There’s a smokiness to his serenade that is reminiscent of Tom Waits, and personally, I’d like to hear more of his voice in the next LP Strings of Atlas put together.
As much as I dig the riffs in this record, and especially in the title track and “Gone Away,” I think the basslines in the aforementioned songs definitely increase the physicality of the string play to a degree where it shakes the floorboards under our stereos almost twice as much as it would have otherwise. Strings of Atlas, and specifically Atlas Cage, leave nothing to chance here, and by maintaining a keen attention to even the most minor of details in their music, they avoid a lot of the aesthetical and creative oversights that frequently plague the output of their indie rivals.
Try as you might, I don’t think you’re going to find another extended play in the rock genre quite like the one Strings of Atlas have assembled for the free world in How Far We’ve Come. Both metalheads and hard rockers are likely to agree that Cage’s performance and depth of songcraft on this record are on par with some of the best players in the business right now, and despite the difficulties that come with getting these two camps to agree on anything in 2020, I believe that what Strings of Atlas serve up in this EP should satisfy all who love meaty metallic grooves just the same.
Troy Johnston