4 out of 5

Label: self-released

Produced by: Sanford Parker

With the return of original guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec to the Pelican crew, replacing Dallas Thomas – who left in 2020, having worked on two very interesting, if somewhat parts-of-a-whole feeling albums – it’s inevitable to have some expectations.

The group almost immediately started growing beyond sludge metal confines from the start, bringing in more and more pop-adjacent and melodic elements (to, very subjectively, greater or lesser levels of success) until Schroeder-Lebec left, Thomas was in, and the group seemed to somewhat redirect back towards a more streamlined metal / rock sound, that run ending on the occasionally over-pummeling Nighttime Stories.

So: expectations.

The first recording of the old / new crew thus somewhat smartly plays it safe: this two song cassette isn’t meant to be a preview of what’s to come, necessarily, and is moreso a capture of where the group’s at. At the same time, the familiarity of the band members means we’re certainly not starting from scratch: these are not demos; they are full songs.

And they are excellent. But they are also a tad restrained, either from the group feeling things out again in a studio, and/or because… they should be. Pelican never went away, they’ve just been evolving, with this being the next step.

Opener Adrift absolutely rocks, though, and does call back to some glorious moments from those early albums, when the absolute ear-shattering chugga chugga stuff could sit alongside rhythmic moments and bridges, a combination the group had seemed harder pressed to find. The track doesn’t revel in this, though, and that’s the safe part: it retreats a little in its final section, not quite securing the landing.

My first pass had this track winning over the more subtle Tending the Embers, but return listens have flip-flopped that: there’s a tension to the way the track never breaks – reveling in a forever building, paced guitar / drums interplay – that results in the kind of drone-like intensity we haven’t heard since the debut EP, but updated with the group’s now more nuanced playing styles.