A suitably daring undertaking for a band almost twenty years into their career, InMe have gone for a triple album with their ‘Trilogy’ project. It may be coming only a few years after Green Day’s high-profile ¡Uno! ¡Dos! ¡Tré! triple album, but this is something quite different with a far greater level of ambition; a concept album based on the life cycle.
‘Dawn’, the first chapter in a series also featuring ‘Sentience’ and ‘Quietus’, focuses on birth and childhood. Where stylistically the latter two albums are set to focus on soft rock and metal, this is the melodic rock offering, all song titles having a subtitle and main title in one of many ways InMe create continuity throughout the album.
The Essex alternative metallers’ sixth album gets off to a very promising start as frontman Dave McPherson’s soaring vocals combine with modal harmonies to create the somewhat cinematic ‘Creation: Amethyst’. Hard-hitting guitar riffs with melodic leads show a slight edge to an otherwise soulful ‘Beloved: Seraphia, Seraphia’. ‘Rapture: Land Of The Secret Rose’ shows InMe defying their age to write hooks like a young band with something to show the world.
The progressive take on mainstream rock on tracks like ‘Loss: Children of Exile’ and ‘Chrysalis: Lone Dance On An Empty Train Carriage’ almost brings to mind moments of Biffy Clyro’s ‘Opposites’ double album and while it may be a bit of a stretch to suggest InMe have “gone Dream Theater”, the melodic leads and range of emotions contained within these ten tracks aren’t a million miles away from moments on ‘Metropolis Pt 2: Scenes From A Memory’.
A darker side is shown in first single ‘Hymn: Ivor Elder’, where Dave McPherson’s lyrics deal with alcohol abuse and Marlow’s almost neoclassical guitar licks create a sense of progression. The harmonic shift that happens at the end of ‘Reverie: Aquarium’ doesn’t feel like a rock album’s grand finale, suggesting that this will be a trilogy where separate sections flow into each other rather than clearly divide themselves.
This is very much an album of light and shade, and you can only imagine how many sounds they are going to take on throughout the whole trilogy. It will be interesting to hear parts two and three of this trilogy, but InMe have set the bar pretty high with part one. For an album dealing conceptually with childlike innocence, ‘Trilogy: Dawn’ is surprisingly mature.
ALEC EVANS