Review:

on 2007-08-07 candykaos Said:

The follow up to the band's 2005 debut release, Between the Heart and the Synapse, is a bit of a departure from their old sound, yet a pleasant one.
Mi Fa Mi is largely a concept album, streamlined by a single theme: earth and it's miseries. The album title was derived from Kepler's theory that each planet produced tones as they orbited the sun, with the Earth and Venus singing Mi Fa Mi back and forth. Kepler went further to say that Mi and Fa stood for Misery and Famine and that these two things were ingrained even in our planet's tonality.

The album's opening track, "Swallow People Whole" sets the mood for the rest of the record and gives listeners a taste of what is to be expected from the remaining tracks. It proclaims that the character mentioned throughout the songs fell in love with an empty place and wants change but won't change and he will believe every single pretty word the earth sings, but it won't mean a thing.

The album then goes into "Oubliette (Disappear)" which is laced with the classic TREOS guitars and harder beat which were present on their previous album. The song is filled with shouts close to desperation singing, "DON'T LET ME DISAPPEAR!" as life passes by and no milestones are to be found, just apathy and empty things, or maybe even nothing at all.

The third track, "The Crop and the Pest" speaks of exactly what the title suggests. The song is a broken promise, a lie of sorts, a sin. It's a pest eating away at a crop, it's a lover turning his other into a concubine, it's humankind becoming a scab on the face of the planet, it's a leech feeding on it's host with greed.

The next song, "The Salesman, The Husband, The Lover" starts out with a quiet, almost eerie sound. The music is wed with tragedy and silent dread but transcends into an almost angry uproar of guitars, vocals, drums and synths then once again moves back into the quiet tragedy that it began with.

Possibly the heaviest track on the albums is next, "Smoke and Mirrors".
The song speaks of the lurid hold that the world has over us, or at least tries to obtain. The song might remind one of the thought of imagining the amount of suffering and depravity that it takes to build up one person like Rockefeller. And the blindness and deception that it takes to capture people in a state that could only be described as Orwellian and of 1984 in nature. They relate, "I'm not your whore, I won't be your Babylon", suggesting that the world tempts people to prostitute themselves, figuratively speaking, with Babylon being a biblical reference to Rev. 17:5-6 in which Babylon is described as the mother of all prostitutes and a place of greed and brutality.

A melodic plea follows with "A Realization of the Ear" in which no real instruments are heard and an electronic sound more than just dominates.

"Saturnus", an energetic track, is next on the line-up. It mixes synths, guitars and the more experimental sound of the album with drums and a heavy tune very effectively, and winds up being one of the best songs on the album along with "Swallow People Whole", "Stay Small" and "Pale Blue Dot".

A beautiful, melodic songs is revealed in "Wanderers" that later twists into unusual guitar riffs and shows the ingenuity of the album. Then "Stay Small" provides listeners with a gut-wrenching reality check and great song to rock out to, asking the question "If you really loved your kids, would you even bring them into a world plagued by such misery" and manifests the sad truth behind the fact that by the time most people reach adulthood they are raped of any evidence of ever owning any innocence.
Misery, Famine, and Misery really go into effect with "Music of the Spheres". This track is instrumental and simply goes back and forth between Mi and Fa on the scale.

Next, "The Heir of Empty Breath" reflects on the disgrace that so many people become by the time they grow old and fuses a solemn plea with heavy guitars, plenty of energy and barley any other elements which define most of the rest of the album, giving the song somewhat of a raw feel.

The final track on the album is surely one of it's best. At 7 minutes and 22 seconds one might become weary of the length but the song does anything but drag on. "Pale Blue Dot" refers to our planet, Earth, and is the title of one of the most infamous photographs ever taken: Voyager 1's shot of the Earth taken from a distane of 4 billion miles, depicting our planet as nothing more than a little dot against the vast background of the universe.
The song has a haunting quality and the repeated line, "There's no place like home" stays with you hours after you've listened to the song.

Overall, the album is a spectacular follow-up to a spectacular debut. The lack of Casey's voice is evident, but nothing to be majorly worried about. The albums falls together perfectly, piece by piece, each song adding something important to the whole.



Rating: 10/10

Review:

on 2007-07-31 Alotofnothing Said:

Well, I was lucky enough to obtain a leak of this album in semi-good rip quality. There was a lot of uncertainty hovering around this album for 2 reasons: the always present sophmore slump, and the fact the Casey, a musical genius, had left after Between The Heart And The Synapse was recorded. Well wash away all of your worries, because if you liked the last album, TREOS has thrown another mind-blowing release your way. They broke ground last time by putting Shakespeare on their album cover, and this time the band has based an album on "Johannes Kepler's tonal theory of the planets" according to AMG. Mi standing for misery, and Fa standing for famine are the basic themes for the record, which the band built songs around. There's still the wonderful and different vocal harmonizing, there's still interludes, but the only difference is the punch. This album lacks the pounding riffs and screaming of "Wherfore art thou!", and it settles down a bit. It's a welcome change, as far as I'm concerned, but as far as the band maturing, I don't know. They haven't leaped away from the last album, but they have made another original and exciting record.
Rating: 9/10