The Life Long Learning journey of the Dear Hunter

The Dear Hunter

One of those blogs that I make a point to keep reading is Angry Metal Guy. I've found out about several great albums thanks to Mister Angry and his Merry Crew of Debauchery. Not only do they do quality metal reviews, but whenever they step outside the metal comfort zone it on the whole tends to be great stuff they write about. I also have a special enjoyment of reading lists and they do some awesome lists on there. But the one that influenced this blog entry was where Mister Angry had alluded that he might be leaving the site. Most of the list I concurred with, others I hadn't listened to. But there was one name that I had never heard of and the way he described it sounded intriguing and almost joyous:

Act III is a ride that shows off everything you need to know about this band and it’s an immensely entertaining ride—orchestras, Queen harmonies, and a 40 genre-style-changes later, you’ll just want to start the disc over again.

How can anyone resist a description like that? The band he was talking about? The Dear Hunter and their album Act III: Life And Death. Now due to the name I actually got confused and thought that they were referring to this indie rock/post punk band Deerhunter. But thankfully it wasn't. So I went on Spotify and gave it a listen. And then another. And then another. And then another. And then another. I think I forgo listening to any other album for about 5 days. It really is that good. So of course being the music nerd that I am I decided that I have to listen to EVERYTHING they've done and read more about them.

Casey Crescenzo

Of course since then I've found out that it isn't really them, it's a him. Casey Crescenzo is his name, multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire. He first hit the spotlight when he was a member of a band rather clumsily titled The Receiving End of The Sirens. I haven't really listened to that band but maybe I should. They apparently were categorized as Hardcore, which generally puts me off fairly soon. But I am going to have to put those reservations to the side. Since what Casey has done with The Dear Hunter has got me extremely intrigued. Casey had started writing stuff outside of the band for a while, material that he didn't feel would fit in the general oeuvre of The Sirens. After a while it would seem that they asked him to leave, presumably because his mind was else where. Ah well, their loss. And they folded a couple of years later.  Their loss, our gain.

So Casey decided to throw his weight behind The Dear Hunter. The best way I could describe the music that The Dear Hunter comes out with would be that it is everything that Coldplay wish they could do, but can't. If Freddie Mercury were still alive this is the direction that Queen would have taken. And there is a little bit of Elbow in there as well. Nearly every genre is covered in some way or other and it all fits perfectly. The music swings from one mood to the other using one genre and blending into another. It all sounds very familiar without being repetitive and staying nearly flawlessly original. What we got was an epic concept album, actually. We got Three epic concept albums. All telling the story from birth to death of a character named The Dear Hunter. The story takes place in the later years of the nineteenth century into early parts of the twentieth century. In terms of scope and amount of ideas that are going on the only real comparison would be to Coheed & Cambria who did a five part story, two of which were comic books and three albums where they mixed Heavy Metal, Prog, Hardcore all being conducted with Rush mentality, in fact Casey's singing style is not that dissimilar to Claudio, if only a little less nasally. It is quite obvious that Casey is also an omnivore when it comes to music and he's not afraid to wear his influences in his sleeve.

Act I

The first album was called Act I: The Lake South, The River North, in which the main character is born to a prostitute and a soldier. The father doesn't care so the mother decides to try and raise The Boy on her own, so she renounces her old lifestyle moves to the countryside but in the end she returns back to being a prostitute most likely in order to support her child financially. This album apparently is also bit of a family affair Casey did most of the instrumentations, but recruited his brother to drum and his mother to do some backing vocals. While it doesn't go for the same uber-genre crossing as the subsequent albums, it is by no means any less interesting.  There is a lot of classic feel to this album, with plenty of indie rock thrown in, with lots of harmonized vocals. Though in one song there is plenty of slow swing, jazz if you will thrown in the form of "The Pimp and The Priest" with this slight malevolent sound going right through it. It's a short album, well comparatively speaking, and it's a lovely album. Great starting point.

Act II

The second album was titled Act II: The Meaning of, And all Things Regarding Ms. Leading. This album deals with the teenage years and very early adulthood. The story starts with The Boy burying his mother and setting off for the big city to figure out the history of his mother and possible fatherhood. Whilst there he meets a girl named Ms. Leading, they make love but as it turns out she is a prostitute working for the same pimp that his mother worked for. Eventually his heart his broken and he leaves, with a bad taste in his mouth. The music is massive! In scope, scale and grandeur. Not to mention that the album is also almost twice as long as the previous one. There is a lot more going on in terms of musicianship and general noise then in the previous album, the album starts of with a classical beginning and gets then thrown into hard rock territory. There is a lot of early 1900's feel to this album which when you consider the period it is meant to be set in makes, well, sense. There's swing to be had in great quantities and  harmonized vocals set along with some screaming singing. But I wouldn't have it any other way because in my mind this album is a great teenage angst album without being overtly (and I hate to use the term but) emo. But there is this joyful playing that goes through all the album, especially when the swing and jazz comes through. And the melancholic moments occur on a fairly frequent basis as fits with the story. The best use of that would be in the song "Blood of the Rose".  This is a great album and I would love to hear the material that was cut in order to shorten the album.

Act III: Life And Death

And the concluding album that ties up all the loose ends(well not really) and the pinnacle of the story arc is the aforementioned Act III: Life and Death. It is as close to a perfect concept album as you could get. The background for the album is the First World War. During this story he meets his half-brother without knowing. At one point during the war, there is a bit of downtime and a group of soldiers start sharing stories of their past lives and as it turns out his father happens to be one of them, where he talks about going to a brothel and sleeping with a prostitute called Ms. Terri. During this time the father is nearly killed only to survive because of the half-brothers heroic sacrifice and due to the fathers indifference The Dear Hunter poisons him. The story ends with him taking his half-brothers identity and walking away. If Casey makes good of his promise and releases a book that expands on the story of The Dear Hunter I will be buying it. As for the music on here, well it is again bombastic and grand. There is a lot going on with some serious genre-bending going on. One song ends with a traditional soldiers song, another song goes for folk music with great use of the banjo. There's also hints of arena rock with this big huge massive guitar going on a rampage, akin to Jeff Wayne's War of The Worlds. I don't think Casey will be able to top this album, but quite frankly he doesn't need to.

The Color Spectrum

After the massive story arc about The Boy, Casey decided to go for another huge undertaking and created an EP to represent The Colour Spectrum. Truthfully I haven't listen to all of those, but the ones I have heard have been very good in particular the Yellow Ep and Orange Ep. They all seem to go for this same genre bendifying music that had been done so well with the Acts. It really does help that Casey is a very very capable songwriter, helps even more that he's backed up by extremely capable musicians who assist him in getting his visions to the public. One of these days I will have to listen to all of the EP's when I get the time of course.

Since then he's put out an album named Migrant, this album came out this year and on it Casey really scales back the bombasticity. But thankfully he has enough talent to work with minimalistic approach. There is no concept threading all the songs, instead what we get are individual songs with individual focus. And it does give this open and unrestrained feel about it. The songs are good. I mean they are really good. All the songs are rather hard to define genre-wise, so the best category to use would be indie quite frankly as that is what it is.It is a lot more contemplative album with a more introverted sound to it, and in some cases it sounds more personal with songs like Bring You Down and Shouting at the Rain, the latter one also features an absolutely heartbreaking video. There is a lot more Elbow sounding songs as well, the perfect example of that being Whisper, songs that are sort of geared towards being played with a string quartet and big hearty choruses.

I think it is safe to say that The Dear Hunter have buried themselves into my ear canal and are flatly refusing to leave and I won't be asking them to leave.

Usual Locations Teil Vier: Be'Lakor & The Eternal

My focus-beam will now be aimed at the land known as Fourecks, sorry I mean, Australia. For some reason whenever I think of the music scene in Australia all I can think of is AC/DC, INXS and Kylie. And I've got to say I'm not a big fan of any of those, I might listen to AC/DC but I wouldn't go out of my way to buy an album. But then again, I do listen an awful lot of Nick Cave. So there is that. There does appear to be an awful lot of different music stylings being composed and published down there, but somehow never leave the shore.  These two these two bands that I am going to discuss sound like something else, and while I'd hope that both could gain some monumental success, I'd suspect that the first one would struggle but the second one could easily win people hearts and minds, especially if they continue in the vein of their last album.


First of we'll start with the behemoth(The monster not the band) sounding Be'Lakor. First time I cam across them was when there was a fairly frequent discussion and review requests on Angry Metal Guy's Facebook page. Their description didn't exactly light my fire. Melodic Death Metal. It's a genre I've never really got into, and not for lack of trying. I tried quite a few of the Gothenburg bands that pioneered that style and I just can't get into it, besides maybe Gardenian. But these guys are a bit more special. The first album I listened to was their rather phenomenal 'Of Breath and Bone', which has pretty much got a world wide wholly positive reviews. So I decided to check them out. And boy did it blow me away. Well.... Maybe not at first. These guys have been around since 2004 and were at one point hailed as "Best Unsigned Band in Metal" by MetalSucks. That obliviously isn't true any more but listening to their debut album 'The Frail Tide' I can understand why people were getting excited. On the whole. These guys have melodies in spade. No. They have melody in barge loads.  The amount of times when I've had people in my ear complaining that metal didn't have melody and was just noise, seriously shut the fuck up and put these guys on and then get back to me. Just in the first two songs you've heard enough melodies, enough musical changes and tempo changes that would usually fill 2 albums by lesser bands. One thing that I found brilliant about their music, their last album especially, is that there is this common thread that is woven into every song making the whole album play like it's just one song. After some listens I was going to say that their weak point is their singer, but after a few more listens I realised I was wrong. He growls and shrieks at the right points, often sounding a bit like a Daemon Storyteller, thus lending a certain malevolent air to the whole thing. But seriously though, the intricacy that all member manage to play their respective instruments and weave and wave around each other with apparently very little effort is astounding. Just listen to the beginning of of 'Remnants' there seems to be a near constant guitar solo on the go somewhere in the background which have been turned into main riffs with such an elegant ease. I am aware of other bands that play similar to these guys, and I've given a fair few of them a listen. But none have the both the staying power or the pull-back power for me as these guys do. I always return for more. These guys do deserve every accolade that surely is coming their way. And if more people had sense they'd be touring the world right now.

The Eternal, now these guys have got the sound to make it big. They've been going for a while though admittedly they changed names in 2003 from Cryptal Darkness. Which was the best decision of their career. It would appear that they read Anathema's textbook on "How to Change Your Sound Successfully". They've gone from this rather generic boring Death/Doom/Grindcore and moved, successfully to alternative rock. With a half-way stop at Gothic Metal. I only came across these guys when I was trudging the muddy waters at the Dark Port. Maybe it's no coincidence that these guys have toured with Anathema come to think of it. But yeah, their last album 'When the Circle of Light Begins to Fade' is very much up the Anathema territory. Melodic, slightly meloncholic, and stadium worthy.  They still retain some of the Gothic element, but most of it has been shed away (Thankfully to be honest, generally gothic doesn't float my boat). On the whole they haven't quite reached Anathema's but they're getting there. No doubt about it. I'm not going to spout of that their last album is a classic in the waiting (Unlike Be'Lakor - Of Breath And Bone). But the riffs are there, the singing is there, the production isn't quite there though soundwise it is crystal clear, there just seems to be something missing and I can't quite put my finger on it. But until I can I will listen to the album over and over again.

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Lasting Impact: Marillion - This Strange Engine.

I might have talked about before how this one particular VHS influenced my musical appreciation, it was a Kerrang Heavy Metal Kompilation. On it were such heavy metal luminaries as Iron Maiden, Queensryche, Armoured saint and... uhhh... Marillion. Yes Marillion, the progressive luminaries who started out as pretty much like a Genesis tribute band. The song by them that was on this video was a wonderful ode to paranoia called 'He Knows You Know'. Which is a very unusually short and commercial song by them, especially considering that it was when Fish(nee Derek William Dick) leading them. I, of course wasn't to know that he had quit and had been replaced when I came across a CD called 'This Strange Engine', which was being sold in my home towns shop. This was in 1997. I was expecting some rather heavy progressive heavy metal album only due to that song I had heard from Kerrang!

So I was just a little bit shocked when the first song was more of an epic sing-a-long song, 'Man of A Thousands Faces'! With acoustic guitars, piano's, choirs, EPIC CHORUSES! Loved it immediately, but by the goodness of the Metal Gods this was too much lack of metal, but I stuck with it. Then the next one is a bit of AOR pop, 'One Fine Day', still my favourite song of the album, but by Joe it's not metal. The lyrics as always from Marillion are great, this one ponders on our longing just for that one fine day to appear while we work and work and work, hoping that it will all be better when we retire. In the meantime the rain just keeps on pouring, but then when it all does turn out for the best we still don't want to believe it. Cue a rather nifty guitar solo from Steve Rothery.

Now there's a guitar player who hasn't received the accolades and attention he really truly deserves, bit like Andreas Kisser of Sepultura. His way of playing is rather understated, but full of melody. He seems to go for the less is more approach and never overstays his welcome, but he always adds to the music. Though you'd hardly notice him there when he's there, the hole would be greatly felt if he left.  The songs 'One Fine Day', 'Estonia' and '80 Days' show just how good he is.

The other highlight is of course Steve Hogarth, the man who replaced Fish. He's got a much warmer and melodious singing voice than Fish. Suppose the only thing he hasn't got that Fish did was a rather brilliant word play in the lyrics. But Steve doesn't need to pun his songs, he just writes great stories in lyrical form which on the whole is more interesting than punning. Steve has now been with Marillion for longer then Fish, and released more albums. And although I do like the the Fish Era albums, I still prefer Hogarth's period. For example on the song 'Memory of Water', where Steve has to carry the tune pretty much on his own, I doubt that Fish could have done the same thing.

Now finally after such a long wait, finally we have a metal song! In the guise of 'An Accidental Man' though to be fair it's not really. It's the hardest song on the album and would qualify as a hard rock song, but heavy metal? Maybe in the 70's possibly in the 80's.

What is probably most evident from this album is that there's a strong focus on making songs that the audience can sing along to. But unfortunately that sort of fails a little bit with 'Hope for the Future', it's not a particularly bad song. It just pales a lot in comparison to the rest. It does have some great up lifting lyrics like the rest(bar Memory of Water and This Strange Engine), but on the whole it is probably the only song that can be truly called ordinary(take that Allmusic) on here.

The pinnacle of the album though is the title song, which is an ode to all of those 70's prog rock bands. It goes through nearly all the emotions you can go through. Mark Kelly can finally take centre stage with some great Rick Wakeman-like keyboard flourishes and solo's, Rothery goes ballistic going through his guitar pedals and changing the guitar tone several times, Hogarth goes all falsetto on us, Ian Mosley and Pete Trewavas do all they can to keep up, hold up and show up wherever and whenever they can! There's the expectation that this will all crumble any minute, but the song finishes just as it all should but doesn't. After 15 minutes.



To be honest I was a little shocked at the time when I listened to the album, I was not that enchanted back then, besides Man of a Thousand Faces and One Fine Day, I could just leave the rest. But it kept on coming back, the album that is. And as I've grown older I've started appreciating it more and more. So this blog is written with my 30 year old ears, but using the memories of my 14 year old self.

The love of prog sort of seems to stem from this album. It is not my favourite by Marillion, no that would be Anoraknophobia. The to be honest as well the prog scene is a minefield to walk through, especially when your standard is the song and not the instrument-masturbation-ship. Which is were Marillion is king, the manage to make proggy songs, but without draining your interest in the song itself.