Proclamation opens as a statement of intent: Ney flute and ambient drift, Cody Bowles letting the air thin before Crown Lands kick the door in. When Kevin Comeau’s riff finally arrives on Foot Soldiers of the Syndicate, compact and bluesy with a slightly menacing low-end chug, you understand why the intro existed.
Apocalypse is the third full-length from the Oshawa duo, and its architecture is essentially inverted from Fearless. Where that record led with its longest, most sprawling statement, this one hoards its ambition until the end. Six tracks, none cracking five and a half minutes, then a 19-minute title closer. A structural gamble, and the short tracks carry more pressure because of it.
Some hold up. Through the Looking Glass builds on a slow, arpeggiated guitar figure before Bowles opens his throat on the chorus, and there’s real weight in that moment. Comeau’s acoustic work on The Revenants is cleaner and more assured than much of what surrounds it, Bowles pulling his voice down into a falsetto register that suits the quiet aftermath the song describes.
Blackstar is worth singling out for what Comeau does with the bass. Audible, deliberate, locked into a groove that the rest of the arrangement has to work around rather than lead. Bowles rides it at mid-register for once, and the restraint suits him.
The 19-minute closer is where Apocalypse makes its biggest claim and partially fumbles it. The opening sequence is genuinely impressive, celestial synths giving way to tom rolls and shifting syncopation, Comeau’s Oberheim OB-6 producing a warm, cavernous texture underneath shimmering arpeggios. The flute motif that surfaces around the eight-minute mark, pentatonic and hovering, is the most distinctive sound on the record. Then the track starts compiling incidents rather than building. A choral bridge that opens up space, then an instrumental surge that closes it again too quickly. The astral section past eleven minutes pushes hard but never quite arrives. The ending recovers some of the earlier momentum, but the middle section needed another pass in the room.
Bowles has the range and he commits fully, but on Foot Soldiers and the title track his upper register tips from expressive into effortful, the pitch accuracy there but the confidence slightly behind it. On The Revenants and the quieter passages of Through the Looking Glass, he sounds like a different singer, controlled and specific. On Apocalypse, you can hear him deciding to push where the song needed him to hold.
Apocalypse will be released on May 15, 2026 via InsideOutMusic.
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