Caligula's Horse - In Contact album review

Brisbane’s progressive rockers fail to seek out a port in their storm

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Cover art for Caligula's Horse - In Contact album

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Another export to add to the pile of excellent progressive bands from Oz, Caligula’s Horse have gone full prog with In Contact. Its djenty riffs and all-over-the-place rhythms aren’t a million miles away from 2015’s Bloom, while the soft crooning on Dream The Dead and Love Conquers All is reminiscent of the dream-state style of Tesseract. The problem – if you can call it that – with prog is that you rarely experience an anchor. This is an album with multitudinous sonic switches that, while thankfully not a noodle-fest, can leave you begging for a catchy chorus. Even the big, fat, epic intro of Fill My Heart is regrettably short-lived while the three-minute spoken tirade towards the end is just weird. But when all is said and done, In Contact is a finely tuned, inventive effort that bristles with crystal-sharp clarity.

Holly Wright
Holly Wright

With over 10 years’ experience writing for Metal Hammer and Prog, Holly has reviewed and interviewed a wealth of progressively-inclined noise mongers from around the world. A fearless voyager to the far sides of metal Holly loves nothing more than to check out London’s gig scene, from power to folk and a lot in between. When she’s not rocking out Holly enjoys being a mum to her daughter Violet and working as a high-flying marketer in the Big Smoke.