CALIGULA’S HORSE
Post-pandemic soul-searching replaces djent-adjacent exuberance as Aussie prog metallers deliver grown-up sixth album.
Words: David West Illustration: Mark Leary
Edited by Dave Everley prog.reviews@futurenet.com
When Caligula’s Horse released Rise Radiant in early 2020, the band seemed to be in an ebullient mood with an album about triumph in the face of adversity. Looking back now, it seems almost eerily prescient. Like everyone else, they saw their plans to promote the album crash into the unyielding brick wall of the pandemic. Four years later, Charcoal Grace feels like a sombre, reflective counterpoint to Rise Radiant, that sense of exuberance exchanged for a melancholy born from the isolation and self-examination of recent times.
The album is informally divided into three acts. The opening tracks showcase the group’s contemporary prog metal stylings. There’s the drop-tuned riffing of The World Breathes With Me and Golem. The former exudes anger and sorrow as vocalist Jim Grey pleads, ‘God forgive us,’ addressing ‘the suicide, the addict, the voyeur, the dead’. Despite the sense of darkness, the track moves towards a tentative hopefulness, as Grey declares, ‘I breathe, and the world breathes with me’ at its conclusion.