This is probably the first album in this series where there is really no debate rather this is a lesser known album or band at all. Not to say that nobody has heard of them, but if you ask 100 random people at a prog rock show, at a metal show, or at just about any other show based around a certain genre that they touch on (or at least where those fans might enjoy them), you'll find a very low number of people who have ever heard of them. If I had to really narrow them down to a single genre, I'd say that the band is progressive rock, but there are very strong avant garde and experimental elements to the band as well, just really the general base of the band is progressive rock. However, as this album proves, there is so much more to this band.
Daniel O'Sullivan is probably more known for his work in Guapo (although still probably not that much more known there) and Ulver (only recently joined Ulver). He's been putting together creative progressive masterpieces for a long time now. Æthenor is another project he's in along with Sunn O)))'s Stephen O'Malley, Kristoffer Rygg, and others. For someone who is still so obscure, he's someone who has put together an amazing profile of music.
Personally, I don't usually like progressive rock. I find it way too often to be drawn out and boring without any real substance or feeling to it. I too often feel like it's just drawn out for the sake of being drawn out, and nothing more than a dick measuring contest. That being said, there are a number of outstanding progressive rock bands/musicians that I absolutely. In fact, the ones that I like are all among my all time favorites. Those include Devin Townsend, Frank Zappa, King Crimson (even though they innovated a lot of the elements that I like less in the genre), Guapo, and more. I mean, there's a good 5-10 acts that I really do like a lot, is just that the bands that define the genre, bands like Dream Theater and Rush, are bands that I really don't care for. It's the bands that use their abilities along with a high level of creativity to do something new and unique like the bands I mentioned above, and of course, like Miasma and the Carousel of Headless Horses.
With Perils that's exactly what they did. While I normally go track by track going over these albums, this is as far from one of those albums as I've done so far. It's one of those albums where you really need to listen to the album straight through to get the full experience. That being said, I really couldn't tell you what the name of a track is on the album by listening to it. However, if I hear just a few seconds of it I can likely tell you where it is (with some exceptions), and what it leads to.
Part of this is because the album is divided beautifully into parts. There are themes that reoccur throughout, but there's just a certain difference in style that occurs in each of these sections, as subtle as it may be to most. The general feeling of the album is pretty dark. There's a real feel like you're in colonial America, or maybe a house on the outskirts of a forest in England in the late 1600's-early 1800's. The first time I heard it I actually described it as having a "Sleep Hollow" feel to it. That's what it really reminds me of. Of course, when I said that, the movie with Johnny Depp had only been out for a little over a half decade, so it was a bit of a pop culture thing at the time. Either way, that's the feeling, kind of dark. The music itself goes there too. It's got a lot of moments that are heavily influenced by waltz type music and just general classical era music. However, at the same time it is still something very modern. I may even be a bit off with the eras, because I hear some baroque influence in there as well, although not in the harpsichord type of way that most people expect when they hear the word Baroque mentioned. Either way, the sound is just so unbelievably unique that it's hard to not just be impressed with how they were able to do something so unique in an era where it seems like everything has been done.
Sure though, it's unique and interesting, and the band seems to be technically sound and all, but is it actually good? Is it actually fun to listen to outside of just being unique? The answer to that is a resounding yes. It's a lot of fun to listen to. The melodies throughout the album are incredibly catchy, and are repeated enough to be able to easily latch on to, but not so much that they're incredibly annoying. There are themes that reoccur throughout the album at times, but there are always variances on them so that it's not the same thing, it's almost like revisiting a place after a change has occurred, but just a very dark and fairly disturbing place.
Albums like this not only don't come around very often, they're rare. To see a bunch of musicians around their mid 20's put together an album that has such a great blend of an incredible dark atmosphere, stylistic versatility, great and catchy melodies, and just such a perfect mix of all of those things is very amazing. Really, no matter what age they are it's amazing. They were able to be progressive without being showoffs, they were able to be dark without being boring, and they were able to be versatile without being disjointed.
One last note I'll make is that Guapo, another of O'Sullivan's bands (I believe it was his only other at the time, and his main band) also released an album, Black Oni, that same year. Something interesting about that is that Black Oni has always been an album that I have compared heavily to this one, even though it's quite different as a whole, it has a similar structure without the different sections, it has a dark atmosphere, all that stuff. I just always felt almost like Black Oni was a somewhat stripped down type of thing done using similar ideas to what were used for Perils. Of course these are just thoughts, and I have no idea if the two are connected in any way outside of having a couple of the same musicians and coming out the same year, but it was just a thought I wanted to mention.
Anyway, again, this album has such a great mix. It's rare that instrumental albums can keep my attention as well as this album has. When I need to give someone an example of what I find to be good progressive rock, this is one of the first albums that comes to mind.
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