A.armada, an allience with base camp in Athens, Georgia is the combined effort of members from Cinemechanica and Maserati's tour guitarist Josh McCauley, they bring us the result of their second recording mission. Their long player follows up their 2005 EP, Anam Cara, if you can call a 5 track- 28 minute listen a long player that is. The debriefing of their latest mission is presented in a packaging that wouldn't look to bad in my vinyl collection but obviously there's more to the album then meets the eye. Anam Cara, Gaellic for soul mate, begins their mission like a brave trooper in a dismayed frenzy, running into the woods throwing a hand pomegranate to alert the listener.
Fully loaded and their hearts set on victory they guide us onto the well balanced battlefield of post-rock instrumentation, years of training and drilling make it sound so controlled and in place that there's a cornucopia of tightness. All the pieces on this musical Stratego board have their objective to fulfil, sneaking Scouts of subtle swelling guitars aiding the ruthless Spy of straight forward face bashing riffs in outlining the field for the General. Once the these outposts are set there's no escape from the A.armada stranglehold, it is docile to the post-rock supreme command of the late 2000's supplemented by a distinct striking private of the Cinemechanica squadron.
The clash of the highly combustible, rampaging frenzy that is own of the Cinemechanica chapter and the neo-psychedelia of Maserati might be the components of A.armada, the sum of these Athenian wings is not the sum of their combative power. Once they join forces, they face the reality that their individual strength is absorbed in the clockwork mechanism they've signed up for. Mayhem and mushroom snacks don't go hand in hand all that well and only brings a welcome deviation of the thirteen in a dozen post-rock sound. Nonetheless, the achievements of this Athens Axis of post-rock are not to be regarded lightly. Anam Cara is broken down in five very similar sub-missions but each of them has it's appeals and unveils a bit more of the A.armada weaponry.
The only major flaw of the entire operation is the overconfidence of their opening move, going in with a bang and dispersing over the field opened up their perimeters, but they failed to deliver 'the smell of napalm in the morning'. It's better to blow up then to fade away is a cliché, I know, yet applying it on an albums structure will give the listener a reason to hit play again once the battle has been fought. As many beautiful pieces of dreamy ambience and adrenaline pumping themes Anam Cara may contain, none of these will keep abreast for a long time. The only post-listening stress souvenir I got of this album came from If Only You Knew What the Lost Soldiers Did to Me, one minute in the track. A delightful panned simple riff opens, sober drums fall... easing in the otherwise fine five minute track. In one of the longer breaks they overlooked -or ignored- the guitar riff that drops in a fraction earlier as the drums. Sure, a minor flaw most won't hear unless they go looking for it, but overlooking this when recording/mixing/mastering the album is a deadly flaw in this reviewers opinion. Fixing it could not have taken much longer then a minute...
In the end, what remains after several listens is the need of closure on this album. Something to mark the end of this campaign that is excecuted according to the textbook guidelines, no bodycount, just one annoying fleshwound.
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