River’s End was a complex and somewhat sinister concept album that attracted international attention towards the Brisbane alt-prog outfit. As a result they’ve recently supported the likes of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Opeth and The Ocean, and they’re now ready to unleash album number three, Bloom.
Vallen and Grey remain the band’s driving creative forces, and this time around they looked to brighten their stylistic outlook and produce something with more of a celebratory air. “Sam and I have a really specific approach,” says Grey. “When we did sit down, we wanted to have a very specific vision for what the band was going to do next and what kind of sound we were going to put together. River’s End, just because it was a concept album, it was quite dark, it ended up quite dark-sounding, and we wanted to take a step forward from that. We wanted to be part of something that was a little more to do with sharing positivity and being part of a positive change.”
Along with significantly boosting the band’s profile, River’s End was hailed as an accomplished artistic statement. In spite of this, Vallen and Grey weren’t hesitant about steering the band in a different direction.
“We’re always going to be making the music that we make,” Grey says. “We’re a band in the present, if you will. I don’t particularly want to dwell on things that we’ve already done. That’s not to say that we’re going to be bizarrely chopping and changing and like, ‘Next album’s just nothing but saxophones.’ We’re just writing the music that reflects where we’re at right now.
“I’m really proud of River’s End – I like that album and obviously there’s a lot of fan favourites on that record as well. I feel that this time around there’s an opportunity to step into a completely different world and meet new people, as well as pleasing people that are already fans. I think it’s got something for everyone.”
Indeed, while Caligula’s Horse haven’t distanced themselves from the integration of progressive metal and classic rock that gained them attention in the first place, Bloom contains gentler textures and ruminative moods, evoking thoughts of A Perfect Circle, Smashing Pumpkins and Foo Fighters.
“When we were writing one of the singles, Sam and I deliberately sat and listened to a whole bunch of Coldplay for a while,” Grey says. “Those guys write amazing choruses and really nice textured softer music, and we were going for that approach for one of these tracks. That was pretty much all we listened to for that week.”
Despite the brooding atmospheres and increased accessibility, Bloom still contains moments of metallic heft and technical prowess. As Grey explains, the band’s wide and varied influences are what produce the Caligula’s Horse signature.
“Sam’s a big fan of stuff like Steely Dan, I studied classical and jazz voice as well – all of this stuff that we’ve been working on and performing over all the years is pretty well set in our minds. So if we take an approach, say for example on the song ‘Rust’, which is probably the most straightforward heavy song on the disc, it’s never going to come out sounding like Metallica. But we’ll take the approach, ‘Yeah we’re going to write this heavy thing,’ but it’s always going to have those parts of us that are so quintessentially Caligula’s Horse attached, because that’s what we do without thinking.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
