Ironwood - Storm Over Sea (2010)

With a very confusing approach to music, today we have Ironwood, a band that seems to suffer from multiple personality disorder and plays a very wide variety of music genres in a very disconnected way. However, at some moments the band reminds us of Borknagar and such bands that mix and match genres in very crafty ways.

Hailing from Australia, “Storm Over Sea” is Ironwood’s second full-length release and shows the band trying to find their own sound, or just playing a bunch of random things together and hoping for the best. Starting off with “When it’s all Over” a very Folk/Progressive piece, the band will surely grab your attention, but will confuse you immediately after with “Hail Sign” a very ‘random’ song in our opinion.

Things start to get more ‘Metal’ with the 11 minute epic “Infinite Sea”, here is where you see the weirdness of the band in full-swing. The song starts off like a traditional Borknagar song and then jumps into an acoustic passage only to come back with Black Metal screams over acoustic guitars. If this wasn’t weird enough, the band jumps again into Folk/Progressive mode only to end the song Borknagar-style.

Most of the album varies between genres like a kid channel browsing a TV set and while this is not necessarily bad, it makes this very confusing. The 11 minute songs “Infinite Sea”, “A Bond to Sever”, and “Weather the Storm” keep the same weird pace, and the shorter songs are somewhat calmer and less hectic, but kill the flow of the album thanks to the way they are arranged.

Musically, the band has quality musicians and some of the acoustic sections are very well crafted. The vocal arrangements are very nicely done and sound excellent when it comes to clean choir sections. But the Black Metal screams could have been easily avoided. The Progressive/Hard Rock elements that the band uses are pretty solid, but in our opinion not arranged properly. As for the Metal sections, the band still needs some work to craft more diverse riffs and shape them a bit differently to create more unique sounding songs.

In terms of originality, we have to say that as a whole “Storm Over Sea” is a very diverse album that while disconnected in nature it still has a different feel to it. Maybe it’s the fact that many things sound random that make this band a bit weaker when compared to others that have a better defined sound, but we do recognize that the musical quality is present and lacks a bit of direction.

Overall, “Storm Over Sea” is an album that will appeal only a quite select group of people that don’t mind weird things. If you have an open mind about things and like bands like Borknagar, the folk stuff of Ulver, and other bands that break musical boundaries, then you might find yourself greatly enjoying this release.

Release: December 1st, 2010

Country: Australia