A Sound Mind

Harmonia                              (BEAT MAGAZINE REVIEW ISSUE 1099 23 February 2008)

Independent

Seldom are there times when a record comes as a shock, a revelation, something that impacts with such force and significance that it exceeds any expectations you might have originally envisioned.

The momentous opening of Medulla, like some ghost let loose in an iron works - its abrasive, industrial beat, its haunting orchestral resonance, its sweeping gothic fluctuation that flows into the powerhouse, prog rock of Empathy is a cinematic opening in every sense of the word.  The first vocal line: “On the surface there’s a glimpse of what lives much deeper / If you breathe enough air into it you’ll see it floating / As life skips, jumps, rewinds” – the perfect summation of an album that takes a walk from the dark side to the light and everywhere in between.  This is a darkly redemptive record, exposing rock bottom pain and the journey of those that have been there and managed to pull themselves out of it. 

Frontman Anthony Kupinic is a master heavy rock vocalist, delivering his lines with pure, unadulterated conviction, melding gritted teeth reflection with a soaring, escapist’s beauty. When Kupinic admits that he’d “rather live than die” on The Power To Dream or when his masochistic streak  unmasks itself on Enjoying The Pain you can literally feel surges of energy swell through the speakers.  Kupinic manages to take his anguish and torment and contort it into something insightful, poignant and ultimately positive. His delivery alongside guitarist Glenn Parkinson, drummer Kiran Khan and bassist and orchestral arranger Andrew Bishop on tracks like the epic prayer Grace with its sweeping, towering chorus, the churning, theatrical heavy rock spray of Venus & Mars, the intense surge for air of So Thankful or the dramatic, heavy prog rock opus of Catharsis captures everything that works so masterfully about this act and spits it back out in a magnificent spray of colour and fire. And even when A Sound Mind vacillate or falter on occasion, they still come so damn close to hitting the mark that any little misgivings are excused, left  to wash amongst a sea of dazzling, formidable beauty.  By the time the curtain closes with the melancholic, gentle swell of the title track, the storm has passed, calm has been reinstated and you’re left to reflect on a lot. 

By no means is Harmonia a perfect record.  But there are fragments captured here that exceed anything I’ve heard all year.  A killer chorus.  A spine tingling, sinuous piano piece.  A poetic phrase captured by the perfect vocal, a psychedelic, metallic beat, a seething powerhouse riff, a piece of orchestration that leaves your jaw two centimeters from the floor.  Sometimes all of this combines and when it does there’s nothing else quite like it. That this record was engineered, recorded and mixed by bass player and orchestration wizard Andrew Bishop is ingenious and a little hard to comprehend. 

A Sound Mind are a young band to have dreamed so big.  Some would feel unconfident in taking this risk and coming off looking grandiose and ostentatious.  Many bands couldn’t execute this kind of fusion of progressive vision and anthemic, epic power if they tried.  Most wouldn’t even know where to begin.

I’ve grown tired of acts playing it safe.  A Sound Mind have had the guts and the precocious talent to try their hand at something spectacularly ambitious and are at present, teetering between that vision and something much, much greater.  Harmonia has set a new benchmark in debut albums in the Australian heavy rock scene, a new template for power, purpose, possibility and untamed imagination.  

 ....Melbourne.... progressive, anthemic, heavy rock outfit A Sound Mind, announce their arrival onto the burgeoning national scene with Harmonia: an absolute epic work in every sense.  The vision, the foresight, the ambition, the grand scale imaginings behind this debut album as a concept and a body of work is scarily accomplished for a band who merely dreamed this up in infancy.  The thirteen tracks presented here exceed a mere showcasing, instead forging a signature piece, an imprint in time, a record that melds intelligent insight with theatrical scope beyond imagining.