Telepathy - Tempest album review

Instrumental metal works best when tied to a compelling narrative, exemplified by Pelican, Russian Circles and Red Sparowes, who’ve all used interesting concepts to frame their wordless music. Telepathy have followed suit on Tempest, which illustrates “the harrowing journey of a person beset with grief and faced with total isolation after waking from a great flood”. This Cormac McCarthy-esque fiction has been translated to music in admirable fashion; the drama is felt from the crush of oceanic riffs that wash menacingly around the listener and the sense of desolation that grips you during the disquiet. Jaime Gomez Arellano has done an incredible job producing this record, which is a marked improvement, sonically and compositionally, over their scattershot debut. Telepathy would have made serious waves in the early 2000s, but since post-metal became exhausted, they have to work harder to impress now. The fact that they’ve greater technical prowess than their predecessors, can unleash blasting black metal, include pained screams on Echo Of Souls and are able to avoid most genre pitfalls bodes well.