These two Pelican EPs may be the first EPs I’ve ever purchased. I’m not sure I get the whole EP thing. The bottom line is that I want to own the whole Pelican catalogue and these had tunes on them that I didn’t already have. Pelican, in case you haven’t heard me prop them up, is an instrumental heavy metal band. Four guys, three guitars, one drum set, and no words.
I’m somewhat addicted to the stuff. I actually listen to it a lot when I’m working. If I’m working to music, it’s usually classical music or Pelican. I can’t work to songs with words.
It was a long and circuitous route to Pelican for me. Here it is:
- Saw Friday Night Lights (movie, not TV show)
- Purchased Friday Night Lights soundtrack
- Signed up for Pandora
- Created Explosions in the Sky channel in Pandora
- Noticed that I liked a few songs by Pelican when playing Pandora
- Purchased The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw
- Listened to it occasionally for a year or so but never got into it
- Forgot I even owned a CD by Pelican
- Read article in The Reader about thriving heavy metal scene in Chicago entitled The Man Behind the Metal
- Decided to give Pelican another chance, purchased What We All Come to Need
- Fell in love with The Creeper…then fell in love with whole album
- Purchased Australasia and City of Echoes
- Saw Pelican at Do Division Street in June 2010
- Bought these two EPs
So there you have it, a veritable Pelican trail, resulting in all of their studio albums and unadulterated Pelican love today.
It’s heavy stuff, certainly not for everybody. I played it for my college buddies last year thinking that some of them may find it interesting. They didn’t. To a man they hated it. Oh well.
I find it very melodic. The songs are long with several distinctive guitar combinations in each. Sometimes the songs come at you right out of the box and other times you get a long intro that builds into a ferocious guitar frenzy. I’ll buy anything new that comes out from these guys from now until I can’t hear anymore.