Album review: Earthside – Let The Truth Speak

The second album from Earthside is a lot. Some eight years since the New England collective sprang onto the prog-rock scene with sprawling debut A Dream In Static, they’re back with a set of songs that tread the fine line between exhaustive and exhausting, throwing an ocean of ideas at the listener and daring them to keep head above water. For some, it’ll be a thrillingly euphoric experience. For those on another wavelength sonically or thematically, it may all be a bit much.

“If truth is so important, so hallowed that we hold it as perhaps our most sacred tenet, then why do we go to such great lengths to deny it the moment it makes us uncomfortable or goes against our narrative?” It’s the question burning at the heart of Let The Truth Speak’s conceptual maelstrom. A little pretentious? Absolutely. But with mainman Jamie Van Dyck a graduate of music composition and theory at Yale, and his bandmates of a similar calibre and high-mindset, it’s indicative of the probing, indulgent nature of these 10 tracks and near 80 minutes of sound.

Everything feels massive. From thumpingly percussive opener But What If We’re Wrong to the urgent organs of All We Knew And Ever Loved (reminiscent of Hans Zimmer’s excellent Interstellar soundtrack) individual fragments build together into a cathedral of expansive experimentation. Guitars sweep over tectonic rhythms as vocals soar endlessly skyward, in search of that titular truth. Even the list of contributors – including Canadian singer Keturah, Russian vocalist Gennady Tkachenko-Papizh and Leprous’ Baard Kolstad – seems stupendous, drawn from every corner, musically and geographically.

So overwhelming is the listening experience that it would be reductive to try and boil it down any further here. Safe to say, though, that those with an appetite for modern rock in its most sprawling, progressive form will find material here that they could be unpicking for years.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: TesseracT, Leprous, The Ocean

Let The Truth Speak is out now via Mascot