Opener The Runner kickstarts proceedings in as visceral and groggy a fashion as an oil slick, sounding akin to the seabed drawing forever closer to a gargantuan rotary blade capable of sawing the UK in two, before the West End ebony and ivory twinkles of Minion's Song permeate the murky incoherence, almost like Golden Silvers fretting over rhyming dictionaries with the "masters of the universe". Then a roisterous, distortion-ravaged wig-out ensues in the closing moments. Although it's not until Interglacial Spell that your ears are assaulted by the now-traditional Amplifier frenetics, dirgeful horns spread lavishly over hefty crunch. The expansive title track sees the trio delve into the tenebrous depths of hypnotic prog, like an aqueous Secret Machines emerging from a sea of sting-eyed sweat, before they plunge further into experimental oceanic trenches with the gallivanting White Horses At Sea / / Utopian Daydream, an orthological nightmare, if a Donnington dream. Intermittently Octopus sounds somewhere along the quite discomforting lines of Grant Nicholas being hounded by a naked torch-bearing Boris, as on the exhaustive closer to Part One, Trading Dark Matter On The Stock Exchange. Part Two, a similarly arachnid-like beast, spans eight tracks, commencing with the Arabian Nights-gone-System Of A Down behemoth The Sick Rose (an adaption of William Blake's eponymous symbolic poem), before Interstellar revolves repeatedly around a worn and torn pummelling guitar riff like a Rottweiler attempting to rip its tail off, periodically injected with haunting, chorus-laden refrains. Approaching the denouement of their most sweeping outing to date a grim monotony tarnishes some of their more overwhelming moments, Bloodtest regurgitating shards of meandering six string indistinguishable from many of the eleven tracks anteceding it, however the bright acoustics and ochre strings of Oscar Night / / Embryo break with tradition amidst lyrics linking dinosaurs and critters concealed in amber with the haggard crocks of Hollywood. Without enough concrete concept to validate two hours' attention, Amplifier perhaps out to have toned the relentless drive down on this occasion, lopping a tentacle or two from this occasionally astounding, all too often sticky listen.
