Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Perfection is a near impossibility to achieve, but we can have fun and bring others a huge amount of pleasure by seeking technical cool and emotional gravitas to the performance, and with our unique perspective offer complexity, a deep relationship between thought and exploration in everything the audience will hear as they undergo a feeling of the divine you inspire, a Transcendence of will that sticks to the hearts for all time.
Stormbringer’s Mike Stockley, Ashley Smith, Darren Cavan-Quantrill, Barney Byron, and Jon Paul Quantrill return with their brand-new album Transcendence, and it is one of immense power and responsibility rock anarchy, a non-negotiable thrust of classic rock/heavy metal alertness infused with a mindful groove that sits at the table of resilience and dams’ adversity with logic and emotional stability.
The weaving of evolution is one that surrounds the album, both professionally as the continued impressive growth of the band evidently shows, and within the lyrics and sound themselves as entities, as separate beings offered a moment to breathe, to progress in the light, and as tracks such as Busy Doing Nothing, Dirt And Bone, Cut The Vein, the superb Scapegoat, and the thrill of the finale in Damn You All offer sanctuary against the abyss of other’s failure to convey this evolution as a right, so the listener is captured by the heart to do more than enjoy the physical response, they actively scream for more.
The point of searching for a sense of the whole and the divine is not be lofty above others, to be ungracious in superiority, but to be seen as pursuing an attainment that is far beyond the humblest of people, the artist to be unpretentious and never arrogant, and the band achieve this in the album with great sincerity, each track exposing the fragility of human conscious when they confront the darkness, and how they soar when overcoming the bleak and the desperate filled with unwarranted pride.
Transcendence is only achieved by considering what lays beyond our present moment in time, and for Stormbringer it heralds surely another stepping stone to the top.
Stormbringer release Transcendence on September 4th on Attic Records
Ian D. Hall