Many metal fans (myself included) have enjoyed Pelican’s post-everything ambient music for the majority of the last decade, and so it has been a tad unfortunate that relocations and changes in their personal lives have kept the band members from releasing a record since 2009’s What We All Come To Need. Finally ready to get their pedals in gear, the band will be releasing the four-song EP Ataraxia/Taraxis next Tuesday, April 10. Created with the help of engineers Sanford Parker (Twilight, Circle of Animals, Nachtmystium) and Aaron Harris (ISIS), the startling soundscape of Pelican is definitely back.
To win your copy of the new EP, tell us about your favorite Pelican album and what makes it so. This contest will end at midnight on Wednesday, April 11th. The winner will be contacted by email. You must have a mailing address in the US or Canada to be eligible to win.
BUY ATARAXIA/TARAXIS
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LISTEN TO ATARAXIA/TARAXIS
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First Peregrine, then Pelican. Are you guys going to post something about penguins today, too?
Cormorant maybe?
It’s got to
1. be a bird
2. start with a “p”
3. and end with the “n” sound.
Come on, get with the program. Pigeon, sure. Puffin, yes. Peahen, absolutely. But Cormorant?
Ok, ok.
PILGRIM.
wait, no. shit.
Clearly, you see what they did there.
‘The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw’. I enjoy all the albums quite a lot but this is my favorite. I hesitate using the word “epic”, but there you go. It kind of is.
The best Pelican album would be the split they did with These Arms Are Snakes. Also includes the collab with the band. Tracks are so heavy and perfect. Short and sweet, just the way I like it.
My favorite album is The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw because it is consistently their best, and it has two of my favorite songs by them: Last Day of Winter and the untitled track.
Australasia. Because 1. it was my first listening experience with Pelican. It’s what sold me on their music. 2. Have you heard “Drought”? There’s reason enough.
Australasia is easily my favorite album of theirs. Every song on that album is like listening to an epic journey. From the production to the song structures I think that album is about as perfect as an instrumental release can get. It has its own sound and originality that is unlike anything out there. Fire In Our Throats is a close second and the self titled EP is just awesome as hell. Definitely their creative peak era.
It’s so hard to pick a fave from Pelican’s expansive discography, and my pick has definitely changed over the years. My current fave is their “Ephemeral” EP, simply because I associate those three tracks with a very exciting time in my life. I had moved to Oregon after living in Central America. I was working my ass off and I was in love with the landscape around me, but I knew I had to move away if I was going to find decent work. Basically, the “Ephemeral” EP sounds like the soundtrack to an intimidating adventure in an epic landscape.
My fave is “what we all come to need”…i heard “the creeper” before i was even aware of the band or the albulm and just thought wowser! Its fast become a firm fave, is timeless & will attract ppl for years to come i think. Looking forward to seeing pelican for the first time in London 7th and Brighton 12th
The best pelican album in my personal view is there last one what we all come to need. This album is the post rock album for me as this got me into the post rock genera. The cover art was what got me the bright colour off the red sea with the dark posts standing out with the clouds thick in the sky in reds and blacks and a white light standing out on the right. The music on the album flow is amazing from heavy guitars to the gentle picking and the slow drums that become soothing as you listen which then become loud and heavy again. The album just changes emotions thorough. And of course you can’t forget Aaron Turner plays guitar on the title track so it must be a good album for a ISIS member to agree and Greg Anderson from Sunn O))) on The Creeper. The album needs no vocals as the instruments say more than words can. the final track is also a step into adventurous for pelican having vocals over there music which works with the soft vocal over one of their softer tracks. The album is just the definitive post rock album to me thanks to it being my first taste in the post rock genera.
My favorite Pelican album is “What we all come to need” because it shows the evolution and power of this band. Their latest album was one of the more dark and deeply toned works of art yet. Despite the powerful sound the song’s didn’t lose their beauty. Even the most bone crunching of melodies can still bring tears of awe. Lastly, the track “Final Breath” (my favorite to date) showed me several things. That Pelican can in fact make amazing lyrical songs without losing their style and emotion, in my opinion the heart wrenching track is perhaps their most emotionally charged song. And more importantly that Pelican’s instruments are just as capable of conveying emotion as any vocal cords. When I finally looked up the lyrics to “Final Breath” they matched exactly how the song made me feel. THAT is why “What We All Come to Need” is my favorite album and more so why Pelican is my favorite band.
My favorite Pelican album is definitely The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw. It’s the first Pelican album i’ve heard and it’s a perfect blend of gigantic electric guitars and acoustic portion that only Pelican is able to do. But this new album should be cool like all Pelican stuff.
My favorite Pelican album is Australasia. It may not even necessarily be their “best” (might have to go with What We All Come To Need on that one), but it certainly is my favorite and the most important record to me in Pelican’s catalog. I did not become interested in hard rock and heavy metal until my later teens, and Pelican (along with Mastodon) was the first band that I was telling all my friends about in college – a band that belonged to me internally, a band I could say I was with from the beginning of their journey. They were the first band I was really, really into that was totally obscure and unknown, and I was along for the ride with them since their first EP (that’s a really special feeling, looking back a decade). The Australasia LP, their first, blew me away on every level. I wasn’t really familiar with drone, doom, sludge, ambient music, instrumental metal, or post rock (In Flames and Meshuggah were as far out of the metal “mainstream” as I’d ventured at that time). I hadn’t heard of Explosions in the Sky or My Bloody Valentine and actually didn’t care for much that wasn’t traditional metal. Hell, Hydra Head was the first indie label I’d ever really internalized, due to this record and the fact that I bought both the EP and Australasia directly from them. I’d never heard anything so epic, so gorgeously repetitive, and so goddamn low tuned and heavy. Australasia was a gateway to so much for me, and changed my thinking about music so distinctly, that its importance in my life cannot be overstated. The artwork perfectly matched the weight of the music as well. I’ve stared at that oversized CD many, many times. The drama, scope and atmosphere in that record, along with its syrupy slow, beautifully brutal riffs and arrangements, combined with so many fine memories of playing the CD over and over in the winter of 2003-2004, just letting the music envelop me – all this makes Australasia not only my favorite Pelican record but one of my favorite albums of all time.
The City of Echoes album, because it serves as such a desolate and depressing soundscape while still managing to be upbeat. That being said, I can still immensely enjoy it regardless of what mood I’m in.
The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw is my favorite album because it’s one of those albums that you can put on and it’s beautiful from start to finish. Best song on the album is Autumn Into Summer. It’s their best song!
I still prefer the very first 4-song demo they released as an EP. Way more doom sounding than anything else they did. I remember finding the self-released version at Newbury Comics after hearing rumors of a “new Hydra Head band”. HH reissued that thing later on, if I’m not mistaken.
I’m a little torn between Fire In Our Throats and What We All Come To Need. Fire In Our Throats has an amazing atmospheric feel throughout (Autumn into Summer…), while What We All Come To Need transitions smoothly from heavy to a bit more toned down hard rock to make for an awesome listening experience.
City of Echoes because of the sexy guitar interplay.
bro-five
Austrailasia. Drought? WOW.
Fire in our throats has to be my favorite. It creates an ambiance and atmosphere that is truly unique. Their own site said it best when refering to their “triumphant” sound. Music that consumes your entire concentration on the edge of your seat waiting to see where they go next.
What We All Come to Need – PURE metal Instrumental Genius. The song “Ephemeral”…. This band will suck you in, Hypnotize you, and before you know it, and hour of your life has passed you by and you will not remember what happened.
I like “The Album Before They Became an Instrumental Band, When Bono Sang for Them”. There were no physical copies. If you wanted to know what it sounded like, you had to ask them, and they’d hum it for you. For those that don’t know, Bono left the band because of the other band members massive egos and rockstar personas. I like it the best, because who makes music with no vocals on it?!
I would have to say Australasia is my favorite Pelican album. It has some magical power over me to mellow me out. I listen to it while I draw, write, play a game, and I sleep to it. It’s pretty friggin’ great.
“What We All Come To Need” is my favourite album from Pelican mainly because of the song “Ephemeral”. I love alot of Pelican’s other songs as well, but IMHO Ephemeral is not only Pelican’s best song, it is also one of the best songs from any of the post-rock bands I know. It reaches that climax that not too many songs manage to reach.
P.S. Pelican really needs to do a show in Toronto!!!! So if I win, ship them over along with their new EP
City of Echoes. It has their best musical ideas and the most diversity while still remaining short. The brief songs, while adding disappointment at times, also add that necessary feeling of wanting more. “Dead Between the Walls” was the second song by Pelican that I ever heard and it stuck with me. It has the thick sound of sludge metal while sitting in the middle of a very relaxed album.
What We All Come to Need. This was a difficult choice, it came down to this, City of Echoes, and the Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw. I landed on this one due to the pure awesomeness of it, obviously. I feel that they really honed and perfected the sound we all know and love so much. They really nailed that “Pelican-ness” while still evolving and growing, not just making copy of one of their previous works. Also, adding vocals to the last track was really brave in this case, and demonstrated that they were staying true to themselves and the music. A great album that I can spin any day and still be enthralled by! Definitely my favourite.
City of Echoes is like being submerged beneath water.
To say anything other than the first self titled Pelican album would be total blasphemy. Jaw-Dropping Heaviness. Period. This is a Metal site right?
You and I are the only ones in the know, apparently.
What we all come to need: It’s hard to choose a favorite, especially when you can load all the tracks from Australasia, City of Echoes, Ephemeral, and hit shuffle and feel that every track is as versatile as the last. I brought this album to an old audiophile with a great vintage listening room – he was pleasantly surprised when there weren’t harsh vocals “soiling” his input hah. That listening experience is what got me into loudspeaker design
“The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw” is my favorite. It’s their best blend of dark and light, heavy and melodic, loud and near-silent. The tedious sludge of earlier material is entirely gone, and their willingness to experiment with major keys and acoustic guitars proved their place among the best heavy instrumental bands.
Australasia. It is so ugly, but pretty at the same time. It speaks in volumes even though there is no vocals. You can really feel their artistic perspective.
The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw love the album
What We All Come to Need is by and large my favorite. It was a hard decision to make as I have yet to listen to a song by Pelican and not enjoy it thoroughly, but this is the album that delivers the most consistently for me. Every song has a vision; they are focused without even approaching the word repetitive (something that bugs me in post-whatevergenreyouwant bands) and inspiring. There’s just the right mix of meaty, gnarly riffs and more melodic stuff. “Epehmeral” and “The Creep” are my personal favorites, but the whole album is pure gold.
Also: vocals on Final Breath? I was shocked, the first time I listened I thought the album had ended and a different band was on. I like it, unusual but I thought it worked.
In 2003, I had the fortune to see the Mogwai/Isis tour in San Diego. I was at the merch table, and one of the dudes from Mogwai told me I had to buy this record (holding the Pelican S/T ep). He said it would change my life. And rightfully so it did.
The Fire in our Throats will Beckon the Thaw. I love everything that Pelican has done…but none of their albums have seemed to capture the atmosphere and actual song writing that The Fire did. It takes you on a journey, that at first, you’re not sure if you want to take but then once it’s over you want back on that ride. The melodies and song structures can’t be touched by another Pelican album. Those guys really peaked at a different level with that album. If anyone ever ask me what POST-ROCK sounds like……I play that album for them.
‘The Fire in Our Throats…’ is a masterpiece of instrumental post-rock. Incredibly heavy, but not really metal. It takes you on a journey without using a single word. The songs are long, but there is no wasted space! It all just came together for Pelican on this album in a way that they have never quite been able to replicate. I don’t think they’ve ever done anything wrong, but this album is just the quintessential Pelican experience. It’s a magical record!
In all seriousness though, the self-titled ep. Nothing they have done, or ever will do will come close to this.
“Ephemeral EP” – Amazing soundscapes, perfect while slogging around by truck on logging roads, or on foor through dense NW rainforests and the Sierra Nevada. When you crest a peak with “Ephemeral” playing, right at that peak moment, nothing can compare. The whole world opens up with the music and the undulations of everything in your field of vision syncs right up with dense, perfect timing.
Our Work with fishers in the Sierra Nevada of CA – frinsproject.wordpress.com
I think no matter what, were all winners here, just for knowing of Pelican. And Im sure their new EP will make it to each of our homes, whether we win or buy it
I enjoy all of their albums, but I consistently come back to the “March to the Sea” EP. The extended version of “March” encapsulates what I have always liked about “post”-metal: extreme tonal texture, triumphal anthemic passages, full dynamic range, and a sense of “otherness” (as in, not like any other music). And the J Broadrick mix of “Angel Tears” has always seemed bittersweet, a mix of melancholy and joy.