Darkness is beautiful on the new release from Palm Reader, Braille. The band has pulled off sculpting a work of extreme beauty in the midst of harsh vocals and instrumentation, using their instruments in unique ways that make you wonder what else hasn’t been done with modern instruments yet. It’s remarkable how through their songwriting, they can explore both profound themes and profound style at the same time.
Listening to Braille, you really get the feeling that Palm Reader is poised to maintain a pre-eminent spot in the heavy music scene. The band sounds ready for the best stages that the metal scene has to offer. Evidently the Surrey, U.K., scene is a great place for heavy music since this band and Holy Roar’s Employed To Serve come from the same area.
The members of Palm Reader don’t sound unsure of themselves from an artistic standpoint; they’ve pulled off making a record that is edifyingly challenging in more ways than one. Moving on from established precepts in heavy music can take a band essentially any direction; they can go anywhere from experimenting with alternative textures to charting new paths for heavy music itself. This band feels thoroughly in the latter camp and is among the bands that it’s somewhat a pity more heavy music fans don’t know. This band deserves to be heard far and wide, and not because they’ve crafted some radio rock record, but because they breathe life into heavy music with their new album, Braille.
Going from band to band across genres, labels, and continents, musical outputs can vary as widely as the people who made the music. Music-making is among the art forms that incorporate the artist pouring themselves into their work; albums often mirror artists’ personal states.
In that light, just like there’s something reassuring when you connect with someone else on a person-to-person level, it’s reassuring when a band like Palm Reader comes out with a thoroughly individualized record that contains something to share with the world. The artists have seemingly come into their own as musicians, and at the same time, the record is great because as a standalone unit, it’s ready for heavy music fans to dig into.
