Half Past Four - Land of the Blind

Whenever you read my blog, you can sometimes know of me mentioning one of my favorite shows on the House of Prog website, Prog Rock Deep Cuts with Ian Beabout. One of those bands that I was introduced thanks to Beabout’s show is Half Past Four. This is a band that have never let me down. With two albums in the can, this year, they have released their third album in a mini or E.P. format entitled, Land of the Blind.

The Toronto quintet have scored another home run for me in my opinion. Not just that they are good, but they brought even more things onto the table with four highlights I've picked out through listening to the entire album. You have the opener, Mathematics. With a swimming/floating rhythm section into watery atmosphere with Annie Haslam meets Caravan’s In The Land of Grey and Pink-era in a flying teapot of a submarine and journey into the oceans of math for the first minute and forty-three seconds.

It suddenly changes into heavy riffs by Constantin’s guitar by blaring out the magical patterns a-la 90125 style as Igor’s Organ and Kyree’s vocals give the driving power and getting the juice up and going before delving down into the ocean for a lukewarm finale. Then, there’s Mood Elevator. Featuring dooming piano intro, alarming guitars and drums coming alive.

It tells the story of someone inside of a maniac person living in his own elevator as if it’s his own mental institute of an abandoned building and you being inside his mind of what he’s going through and done in the styles of Frank Zappa’s Over-Nite Sensation-era. I love their take of Max Webster’s Toronto Tontos.

Wacky and staying true to the original, it’s Half Past Four going in the styles of Zappa, Mr. Bungle, Cardiacs, and Spike Jones with some insane pastoral piano and thumping punches of the rhythm while Kyree brings her characterizations as a Pirate as she tells the story of the One Eyed Man as she transforms herself into Mike Patton. You never know what to those unexpected moments as the sounds with insane locations as if they did a guest appearance on either Pee-Wee’s Playhouse or The Weird Al Show.

I have listened to this twice now. And Half Past Four’s music is like something out of this world that you can as I’ve mentioned expecting the unexpected. It’s music that could have been used during the B&W-era of the Looney Tunes-era and give it a real kick in the gut with some insane surroundings. So my response to Land of the Blind? Worth.Checking.Out.