Today I am making an experiment towards being more direct in my review introductions.  Toward that end, allow me to say the following:  The Pax Cecilia rock my fucking socks off.  I recommend that you go over to their site right now and buy their album.  What's that, you say?  They're giving the album away for free?  They're mailing the album away for free?  Well, I'll be jiggered.  I guess sometimes you get a whole lot more than what you pay for.

For those who need more encouragement on what to not throw your money away on, I shall now commence with the review proper.  If you were to ask the band to identify themselves with a certain sound, they seem to be most comfortable describing themselves as a metal band.  But this isn't quite enough.  Metal bands don't have violins and cellos.  Metal bands don't have prominent acoustic piano.  Clearly, there's something more brought to the table by the Pax Cecilia.

Blessed Are the Bonds opens with a pair of behemoths in "The Tragedy" and "The Tomb."  They're songs that, like much of the rest of the album, refuse to be pigeonholed into any one genre.  Ambient bass and drums are complemented by soft piano and strings, and a sometimes-heavy-sometimes-not guitar.  The vocalist really helps to tie things together.  Gradually, the music gets a little heavier, but not in the sudden jarring manner employed by many other bands of this type.  Subtlety seems to be the key - even as things get heavier, the piano keeps right along with the increasingly pounding drums.  I don't know really know how to describe the sound, because it's dark and metallic like most post-metal, but it's never brooding.  It's contemplative and intellectual, like ambient music, but it's far too focused and energetic to fit there.  I suppose the best description I can give, clichéd as it sounds, is to imagine the ever-present Godspeed You! Black Emperor having suddenly taken a turn towards the metallic.  And gained a vocalist.

Speaking of him, he's a bit of a mixed bag.  While he sings wonderfully throughout the album, and he has some shouted lyrics which also entertain (especially in "The Progress"), when he screams, it sounds like someone is raking a pissed-off cat against a blackboard.  It's disconcerting to say the least, and it pulls me right out of the music.  I've always been a man who could enjoy screaming if I thought it was well done, but this is so incredibly grating to my ears that I must immediately move on to the next track. Fortunately, he doesn't scream all that often.  It's mainly present on the fourth track, "The Machine," which features a very prominent rocking-out style.  Plus, it's the shortest track on the album, so I guess it's forgivable, especially when everything else about this album is so incredibly good.
 
I keep wanting to call this band a post-metal band, but I can't.  I suppose that comparisons to Rosetta are in order, because both stray more into the ambient realm of metal, but the entire approach to music just seems to be different.  Maybe it's the piano - I'm really not sure.  What I am sure of, though, is that this is an amazing album, and for the band to be giving away physical copies for free is really something else.  They have a paypal donate link on their site - if you decide to pick this baby up (and you should), please at least donate the cost of postage.  I assure you, it's worth much, much more.

-Tom Butcher