SYKOFANT – Sykofant

RELEASE YEAR: 2024
BAND URL: https://sykofant.com/

Tell me what you hear and I’ll tell you (a lot about) who you are! Experiencing Sykofant’s self-titled album feels as if a stranger was waving pages of your diary at you without permission, too fast for you to see what it says, before running away sniggering. Needless to say, I’ve never experienced anything quite like this before. However, before plunging further into Sykofant’s microcosm, let’s take a moment to acknowledge how totally awesome it is to experience this album for the very first time! This studio release is groovy, intuitive, versatile, funky, edgy, bold and full of hooks. It is also the very first album of the Norwegian Oslo-based band. Don’t be deceived, though, you can tell the band members are well versed in the art of rock as well as metal. As lyrics and musical themes go, it’s a transcendental album, and an ode to the ’’elders’’, a different generation of musical icons.

The album is indirectly an invocation, a skillfully mixed bag of old and new. How Sykofant manage to pull this off without sounding passé (rather the opposite!) is a mystery to me. The music strikes a very odd kind of familiarity by playing with patterns and popular progressions which evoke implicit memories in the listener, much like the Madeleine cake of Marcel Proust. The effect is that of emotional time traveling, and it hits hard. To me, this feels like crude jolts at times, confusing and deeply disturbing, like a strike of dementia. I can sense my past unfolding before me as parts of the tracks trigger… something… wait, what was that now again?? 

The listener is exposed to a palette of most things progressive and psychedelic, from 60’s and 70’s prog rock to more recent prog metal. There are elements of blues, hard rock/heavy metal, surf, post-grunge, funk rock, alternative metal, progressive metal/neo-prog, pop-punk etc. The composition unfolds to reveal generous instrumental parts that are by no means tedious – often an invitation to introspection, sometimes an invitation to run a sprint, as the whimsical rhythm changes. 

The composition of each track grows organically, extending beyond the commonly established form, taking up space and challenging the traditional Western pop hierarchy of musical instruments. This is a direct reflection of a democratic music writing process where all the band members come to the table (or rather, the jam space). Essentially, this is Sykofant’s trademark, and the reason why this album turned out so wide-ranged and wholesome. The drawn-out instrumental parts create a cinematic effect as well as space for unrestricted play, allowing for a personalization of the listener’s experience. If the album was a space that the listener visited and was introduced to by the host, then the instrumental parts would be like secluded rooms where the listener had the opportunity to retreat. The listener makes the space their own, to a higher extent than when presented with the constraints of words on vocal parts. There is a pronounced live quality to the music, which was a conscious decision during the mixing process. The band members give credit to the efforts of Ole Øvstedal from Chaka Khan Studios in Oslo for what I think most of us can agree is a splendid result. 

Pavement of Color engages with a catchy display of post grunge vocals and upbeat hard rock, and is the shortest and more straightforward track on the release. There is also a psychedelic blues rock Dark Side of the Moon quality to it. As far as the lyrics are concerned, there seems to be a bottleneck situation, a sort of transition, where the subject feels trapped. 

The main influence of the second track, Between Air and Water, appears to be Deep Purple’s Machine Head. Between Air and Water is central to the album, music and lyric-wise. There is also a Pink Floyd-ish quality to it,  but the track quickly becomes fast paced as elements of heavy metal à la Judas Priest take over. It is moody, melancholy and ominous at times, which is consistent with the lyrics. There is a lack of gravity and constraints, and therefore a lack of identity and belonging. As life is by definition a series of constraints (time, place, social rules, other deterministic factors), the state depicted here seems to be one of anti-life, or a meta layer of existence, if not several. The entity experiencing this has access to cosmic knowledge yet is longing for a state where it had a name to speak of, where it took up space in the world. 

This condition which is referred to as an ”existential vacuum” in the beginning of Monuments of Old may be an in-between life and death, existence and non-existence. It’s the experience of a capsule floating in layers of self awareness, singular (alone) and cut off from any familiar context. The third track picks up where the previous one left off. Some elements bring to mind The Division Bell, at least up to the point where the track turns into something entirely different – as is the case with most if not all of Sykofant. 

Between the Moments starts off in a Dream Theatre vein, a melancholy track about the passing of time. There may or may not be some Led Zeppelin influence to Emil’s magnetic vocals. The entity is now subject to constraints and has become ’’slave to (its) own mind’’. Time is suddenly relevant here:  ”Obsess over lost time. It’s fine with me”. When in life, the entity fears losing it. 

Strangers is the track on the front cover art, as it depicts a desert instead of the sea metaphor. The intro is cozy, slow and old school, reminiscent of Whole Lotta Love. The vocals eventually kick in, powerful, sometimes foreboding, and a distinct metal vibe takes over. At this stage there are constraints (e.g. fate), and death lurks nearby. The subject feels small and exposed, and life is ending. The thrilling Dick Dale-ish surf rock part kicks in midtrack, providing that special little made my day factor. 

Forgotten Paths is the last one on the album, and starts off with a crisp, wistful 2000s pop-punk vocal line. The overall effect of this track is cathartic, as the music and lyrics convey a sense of serene contentness. The subject is now beyond the stage of dying and is experiencing a sense of freedom and control, ’’roaming the lands’’, while still partly attached to some place or physical form. However, ’’the bright white lights have recognized another host’’, and the cycle is ready to start all over again. This idea of cyclicity is consistent with the music, as the last track of the album displays a recapitulation of the main themes of each previous track. Music-wise, the end of the album foreshadows the first track, thus achieving the following effect: as soon as Forgotten Paths ends, what feels like the most natural course of action is to continue listening to Pavement of Color. The album comes full circle. 

All in all, Sykofant’s self-titled release is comprehensive and wholesome yet stirring on a primal level. Time is not one-directional but cyclical here. As one gradually gains access to the lyrics, the initial cozy and warm stage rock impression wears off, and the chilly loneliness of cosmic chasms starts creeping up on you. Sykofant approaches music as a mnemonic medium, capturing implicit memories and feelings. Last but not least, Sykofant might just have managed to bridge a generation gap between audiences that haven’t always found a common ground.  

Credit goes to this reviewer’s technical friend who helped dissect the tracks and fill some gaps. Scratching our heads over this buffé of an album has been a pleasure.

Releases information: CD, Digital, Double LP released on May 31, 2024.