4 out of 5

Label: Southern Lord

Produced by: Chris Common

Pelican’s debut EP / mini-album was perfect… with exceptions. It encapsulated exactly what I wanted from instrumental metal, but there was some fudginess with the production / mix I perhaps questioned. However, benefits to the era before I’d gone digital, and before streaming: I sat with CDs for a long while; I listened to them, front to back. So I got used to that fudginess, until it became part of the perfection.

This held true for the first several, classic Pelican releases. I adored them, but I had nits with the recordings that eventually got factored in to the adoration.

Remixes / remasters, when you have that level of familiarity with the original material, are wild highs and lows. It’s been a blast experiencing the run of Pelican remixes / remasters, and as a fan of Chris Common’s mixing in general, the idea of him remixing a Pelican album he produced – Forever Becoming – was an incredibly exciting prospect. Especially given that this release was also nit-susceptible, but from a different angle: this was “modern” Pelican, returning to heavier sound after some comparatively less-metal releases. I liked the disc quite a bit, but it also had that taint of a group trying on a sound they hadn’t for a bit, and with a new band configuration to boot; like they needed some convincing to rock out.

The remix definitely tempers that feeling by upping the intensity of the low-end. We get Chris’ streamlined, clean recording style, and then the new touchups push the guitar crunch up to equal the already booming percussion. This absolutely tells the “return to metal” story better than the original mix, and allows the tracks (and album!) to achieve epicness, setting it on par with the scope and heft of Australasia, but with emotionality in the compositions learned from the band’s journey.

What’s arguably lost in the mix is the midrange, or at least when that’s played off against the low end. Moments in the original mix allowed for some good bass / guitar interplay that doesn’t annunciate here; in exchange, though, when a track like Immutable Dusk takes its time to spotlight each layer, it’s gorgeous – all the nuance is there. This track alone is kinda worth the new mix.

The inclusion of the Japanese-release version track Bardo is nice; the decision to sequence this between Vestiges and Perpetual Dawn is a little disruptive – it’s kind of an upbeat, bouncey track – but I get it, at least in order to put the Allen Epley-vocaled The Cliff at the end of the digital edition, which does work. (And, as has been commented before, might as well be a Shiner track.) Regardless, sequencing queries aside, I dig the inclusion of Bardo on the wax, and both tunes on digital, to fill out the runtime.

If you’re enough of a Pelican fan to be curious about the remix, it’s definitely different enough for a listen, and if you liked their earlier chugga-heavy sound, worth it for a double dip if already owned.

And for new listeners – the band and Common obviously have confidence in the mix, since it’s what’s available going forward.