Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
We cannot truly see What Lies Ahead Of Us, but we have concrete evidence that the lies told us in the past have led to a moment in which the tipping point for humanity’s survival has more than likely already by passed our senses, and all that can be seen from our end of the celestial seesaw are the images of what might have been.
If that is the case, one might wonder if anything we do now can change the outcome or is it just a sense of jester’s appreciation of futility, keeping us busy so we don’t notice the inevitable slide towards the bottom end of the seesaw and onto the cold hard realisation in which we admit we were duped all along.
Of course, there is a point, and there is hopefully still time, but we all need to acknowledge our own failings as individuals, let alone bringing our respective governments to task, and for Brazil’s Pentral and their superb debut album, What lies Ahead Of Us, the moment in which their voices must be heard has never been more acute or required. It matters not the source, all voices are acceptable when it comes to saving the only home we have, but perhaps for those who accuse Heavy Metal and Progressive Rock as having nothing to offer except the sense of the loud and the tight wonderful noodle expression, their eyes will be opened to what Pentral offer in terms of wisdom and the quest for healing their own country’s leadership systematic abuse of the rainforests.
The atmospheric delivery is not just for effect, it is the landscape on which the portrait is placed, each note has meaning, as a brushstroke reveals the inner character of the scene, as each tree felled in the name of progress and the chase for the cheap cent is a reflection on our own fallibility as a species.
From the initial moments of the album’s opening track, Silent Trees, and through tracks such as All My Wounds, Letters From Nowhere, A Gift From God, No Real Colour In Souls, Are You Satisfied? and the finale of The Law, Pentral’s quest is bathed in purity, the reward in which we seek is within our grasp if we can let go of the bag of silver hindering the ability to grip, and the spirit, to which the band’s name aptly translate from Latin to, to see what really lies ahead of us if we open our minds to reject the inevitable, and instead embrace revolution in Earth’s name.
An album of creative beauty, a soundscape to which the listener must not escape from, must not reject, and under the auspicious ideals of Tim Palmer, Pentral’s Victor Lima, Vagner Lima and Joe Ferri have found a way to bring the art of the Progressive into the limelight in the battle against the ravage of the rainforests.
Pentral’s What lies Ahead Of Us is out now.
Ian D. Hall