Album Details

• Artist: Hour Of The Shipwreck
• Album: The Hour Is Upon Us
• Label: Shipwreck Music
• Year of Release: 2008
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: solitaryman on 2008-06-07

It's not very often that a band comes along out of nowhere with a debut album like The Hour Is Upon Us but this new self-released record by LA's Hour Of The Shipwreck will surprise you endlessly with it's grandoise and epic movie soundtrack nature, it's post-rock foundation and it's endless twist and turns of excellent songwriting and playing.

Incorporating a live choir and a backing symphony of strings and brass, the "band" (which the album credits as having over 30 indivudal members for this project) itself is comprised of the traditional rock grouping of guitar, bass and percussion. The vocals, done by several different people throughout but mostly led by the ethereal-sounding Richie Kohan, are a highlight as the choir takes the arrangements and makes them soar right alongside the band. Across the 7 songs, you'll hear the concrete nature of the post-rock driving the epic scores behind them along, all the while shifting up and down between higher-paced rockers and softer, more imaginative and descriptive interlude sections. And the pace is always there, always foreboding with dread as you expect the music all to break over the crest of the great wave it creates. I could go into why each song examples all of this and more, but it's really worth hearing them all on your own. It's an experience, that's for sure.

Excellent musicianship, songwriting that sounds equally inspired by Danny Elfman or John Williams as it does Explosions in the Sky or even Radiohead in it's nature of epic despair and grand distraught. All along you get a haunting sense of dread from The Hour Is Upon Us, while the music sends your imagination off to new places, the lyrics and underlying moodiness will definitely leave you feeling uneasy. But Hour Of The Shipwreck make this not a problem at all by hitting you so very hard and fast with their music that it feels like you've been nabbed up off the street by a passing car and forced to watch as the driver careens down a busy city street at rush hour going about 80Mph: basically, I had no problem at all falling in love with this album, and I know not everyone will, but I know for a fact this is a love-hate type of album. Let that be considered when you go to check it out but do not by any means let it stop you from hearing it; this is the type of album I think should be heard by any music fan, as it has some of that universal appeal that many rock albums aim for but can never quite find. Seriously one of the best albums I've heard this year!

User Reviews and Comments

on 2008-06-10 SolitaryMan Said:

Yeah, interesting...to me the sound brings to mind two things: Lord of the Rings, and Radiohead. Don't ask me why, but the vocals and the way the songs progress have an undeniable resemblance. I'm a sucker for big, epic music when it's done in a progressive manner like this; the songs all sound fairly similar but there are moments of sheer perfection where everything either slows down or gets louder, and those shifts happen so effortlessly that I can't help but love the entirety of the song for them.
Not Rated

on 2008-06-09 X_NaStY Said:

This is an interesting little band.. I kinda dig the two songs on their myspace. I'll have to check out the full album soon. Thanks for the rec!
Not Rated