Threshold – For the Journey

English metal rockers Threshold return with their 10th studio album ‘For the Journey‘ on Nuclear Blast Records. Threshold while being an English band are relative new to myself as their popularity is mainly across the channel in mainland Europe where their albums do chart in various countries national charts. I became aware of Threshold through their talented drummer Johanne James‘s side project ‘Kyrbgrinder‘ who I’ve seen a few times around the country.

For the Journey opens with the rocker ‘Watchtower On the Moon‘ with a tight guitar riff and Damian Wilson’s clear an clean voice cutting through the tracks urgency and with some nice keyboards from Richard West complementing the chorus sections in the song a feature you soon realise is one of Thresholds trademarks. Unforgiven follows at a slightly slower brooder pace than Watchtower with quite dark lyrics about how hard it can be to forgive someone.

Next track ‘The Box‘ weighs in at a massive 1 second short of  twelve minutes long! So no 3 min  pop dity here, Opening with sounds of thunder and rain overlayed with a melancholy solo piano this song tells of the finding of a box during a storm and it’s contents. After 2 1/2 minutes the drums of Johanne kick in and the rest of the band soon follow to take the track through several very well played instrumental passages before breaking back down to the solo voice and piano of the opening passage and some string sounds before fading out on the lonely plaintive beep beep sample of the doomed Soyuz 1 space mission by Russia. The contents of the box are never described during the song which adds to the mystery of this majestic epic track.

Other highlight tracks from the album are ‘Autumn Red‘ which opens with a crunching guitar riff that ends in a falling piano motif the contrast between the two very different instruments is great and very well executed during the song. In fact the playing through the whole album is excellent from all the band members, the layers in the keyboards especially well thought out I thought. Though I would of liked a bit more variation in Damian Wilson’s vocals styles between the faster and slower tracks to my ears he sounds too similar which tends to make the album a bit samey. Which is unfortunate as there is some excellent ideas and playing on the album.

Track Listing:

1. Watchtower On the Moon
2. Unforgiven
3. The Box
4. Turned To Dust
5. Lost in Your Memory
6. Autumn Red
7. The Mystery Show
8. Siren Sky

Line-up:

• Damian Wilson – lead vocals
• Karl Groom – guitars
• Richard West – keyboards
• Steve Anderson – bass
• Johanne James – drums
• Pete Morten – guitars

Website: Official Website