Tangents – One Little Light Year (2010)

Featuring Derek Kerswill (ex-Unearth, session for Shadows Falls) on drums, today we have Tangents debut album “One Little Light Year”, a very different release to what we are used to getting for promotional materials. Tangents is a duo that plays a very eclectic mix of Alternative Rock, with some Progressive / Post-rock influences and other more ‘mainstream’ elements that makes them very catchy and probably appealing for people that like bands like Coldplay, Muse, etc.

Before you start to think that you need to click on something else to read, just hold on a minute and keep reading since “One Little Light Year” is actually not that bad. If you like bands like Votum, Canadian Fen or even Anathema and similar Progressive Rock/Metal bands, you might find Tangents appealing since they have some catchy songs with interesting guitar passages and atmospheric sections that will grab your attention.

Starting with the very hypnotic “Arrow in the Heart”, the band opens with a very well crafted song that showcases nice drumming skills, interesting guitar textures, some electronic sounds here and there and powerful vocals. While some people might find the vocals very annoying, just keep listening and before you know it they will grow on you, they sure did on us.

The rest of the album features very diverse tracks that showcase many different facets of the band, but come nicely together. Sometime you might think the album is dark on songs like “Static”, and then all of a sudden it becomes very ‘happy’ with other tracks like “(missing) One little Light Year”. The overall flow of this release seems a bit convoluted, but it manages to work well with the different emotional ranges of the vocalist.

In general, this is not your typical Alternative Rock release, since it has a very wide spectrum of influences. While we don’t particularly listen to much music like this, we have to say that this album has enough quality to get the listeners attention and probably make them fans of this young band.

Release: October 26th, 2010

Country: USA