Norwegian art-rockers Gazpacho are masters when it comes to crafting richly layered cinematic rock music, often built around dark and menacing themes. They’ve experimented with concept albums throughout their long career, most notably on 2011’s Missa Atropo and on their lost album Random Access Memory, but their music is always grounded in the deeply melodic. They are a truly fascinating band with an excellent reputation for their live shows, and have released three live LPs to date.

The six-piece, comprised of Jan-Henrik Ohme (vocals), Jon-Arne Vilbo (guitars), Thomas Anderson (keyboards, programming and production), Mikael Krømer (violin, co-producer), Robert R Johansen (drums) and Kristian Torp (bass), have released eleven albums in total. Firecracker is their latest and every bit as intriguing as the rest.

Explaining the idea behind the “Fireworker”, Anderson writes on the band’s official website: “There’s an instinctual part of you that lives inside your mind, separate from your consciousness. I call it the ‘Fireworker’ or the ‘Lizard’ or the ‘Space Cowboy.’ It’s an eternal and unbroken lifeforce that’s survived every generation, with a new version in each of us. It’s evolved alongside our consciousness, and it can override us and control all of our actions.”

Structurally the album is made up of five tracks, with fifteen-minute-plus opening and closing numbers bookending a more conventional interior. Space Cowboy is that opener, and the longest track here coming in at nearly twenty minutes. It’s loosely composed of four different five-minute sections, and is beautifully gentle in places, rises up in others, and features choir elements for gospel and metal touches that tie things together neatly.

Hourglass is a mesmerising piano track with some wonderful violin, while Fireworker is the album’s lead single and a high-tempo affair propelled along by some pounding drums. Antique slows things down, and features Ohme’s finest vocals on the album, before Sapien rounds things off with brooding menace, mixing distorted guitars with sparse interludes that feel oddly unsettling.

Existing fans of the band will love what they’ve done here, while newcomers will delight in the spacey, atmospheric soundscapes that Gazpacho have, for so long now, excelled in.

Buy or stream Fireworker through Gazpacho’s official website.

Fireworker tracklist:

1. Space Cowboy

2. Hourglass

3. Fireworker

4. Antique

5. Sapien

Author: Joe Sharratt

Joe Sharratt is a writer and journalist based in the UK covering music, literature, sport, and travel.