Album Review: Fire By Silos by Toska

Brighton progressive rock trio Toska released their debut album Fire By The Silos on 2^nd November. The band explain: “Fire By The Silos is a concept album. An idea grown from social observation; looking at humans, aspects of the world, and the direction we’re going in. It’s set in the near future and focuses specifically on a person affected by great political and economic change, forced to lose everything. Fire By The Silos attempts to describe the psychological and emotional torment that takes”.

It’s an ambitious, diverse and captivating album. Taking influence from a huge span of music including Karnivool, SikTh, Hans Zimmer, Thomas Newmann and Gustav Holst, Toska use vast dynamics and obscure chord voicing to convey a very emotional and cinematic tonality.

Due to the prog rock nature of Toska’s sound it could be divisive. Some prog bands fall into the trap of doing too much and being a little too experimental. Luckily Toska have hit on a winning formula by refining their sound and bringing in elements of metal, post-rock and math-rock to make it all a bit more diverse and immediate.

Clocking in at over an hour it’s probably not ideal for a casual listen, but you probably already knew that. It’s an album to immerse yourself in, stick your headphones on and give this your full attention. Let the intricate guitar work flood over you, get captivated by the metal riffs that make an appearance every so often, get mystified by those math rock time signatures and get lost in the atmospherics.

‘A Tall Order’, ‘Congress’ and ‘Prayermonger’ are the standout tracks, but don’t do this a disservice and listen to it as album. It’s a good debut and points at great things to come from the band.

AD Rating 7/10