Album Review: AraPacis – Nucleus of Chaos

Mon­tre­al-based Ara­Pacis lat­est album, Nucle­us of Chaos, bold­ly blends heavy met­al with pro­gres­sive and goth­ic flour­ish­es, push­ing the bound­aries of their eclec­tic sound even fur­ther. Ara­Pacis formed in 2003, and this album, has proven once again that they are unafraid to exper­i­ment, craft­ing a dynam­ic and unpre­dictable lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence.

From the open­ing track, “Let in Love,” the band sets an atmos­pher­ic yet crush­ing tone. Michelle MacPherson’s vocals soar with both grit and grace, echo­ing the pow­er­ful ener­gy of front­women like Anneke van Giers­ber­gen, and there is a Janis Joplin under­tone that is super intrigu­ing. Michelle’s deliv­ery bal­ances melody with feroc­i­ty, anchor­ing the chaos with a com­mand­ing pres­ence.

Gui­tarist Jer­ry Fielden—also the band’s founder—continues to demon­strate his vir­tu­os­i­ty through­out the album. His riffs range from clas­sic met­al to doom-laden grooves and prog-inspired solos. The band clear­ly draws on influ­ences from Rain­bow, Black Sab­bath, and ear­ly Rush, while still sound­ing fierce­ly orig­i­nal.

“Nucle­us of Chaos” (the title track) is a swirling cen­tre­piece, com­bin­ing synth tex­tures and intri­cate time changes that reflect the band’s roots. The pro­duc­tion is lay­ered but nev­er mud­dled, allow­ing every instru­ment to punch through with clar­i­ty.

The lyri­cal con­tent on this album is espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing and tackle’s themes that are, at times, very per­son­al to the band.

Jer­ry offered some insight into the tracks on the album.

Jer­ry Field­en – The first two songs are from my 70s and 80s reper­toire “Let in Love” is from my Toron­to band Ris­er from 1982 and “The Park” from my Mon­tre­al band Blade from 1978, I also cov­ered it with Ris­er.

First of all I want­ed to go in a few new direc­tions on this album: for one, I got very inter­est­ed in Ara­bic music, it is so rich and var­ied — I got a bit of influ­ence from the Maqam Rast scale which is just one of the many scales fea­tured in this music; one influ­ence was my friend Cher­ine Amr from Mas­sive Scar Era, a band she found­ed that com­bines tra­di­tion­al Ara­bic with heavy music.

What I did with all this is real­ly a first stab and high­ly dilut­ed, a taste of what could be. The words at the begin­ning of Grip It are “tamasak beh” which means Grip It or Hold On to It in Ara­bic. The C Maqam scale on the main riff has a half-flat­ted 3rd and half-flat­ted 7th so it might feel a lit­tle uneasy for some.

I want­ed to try some­thing dif­fer­ent too key­board-wise as it was Gillan’s first album — he did very well for a 13-year-old, he has now start­ed work­ing on his sec­ond album with us. We tried to have some inter­est­ing rhythms and instru­ments for him to do on Epi­taph Epiphany for one. He is also fea­tured on Symp­to­matic Reac­tions. That one was our first attempt at sym­phon­ic met­al, and we had a lot of fun doing it!

Then, as I am a huge blues rock fan, I had to take Lost in the South Bend for a spin; this is based on a true sto­ry about one of my friends who has since passed away, who invit­ed one of his friends to stay at his place when he was in trou­ble. This result­ed in the friend steal­ing mon­ey, food etc. and even cheat­ing with the wife of my friend. In my song, my friend gets his revenge in true blues style.

Epi­taph Epiphany car­ries a seri­ous mes­sage. It’s about some­one close to me who has had seri­ous ill­ness­es in the past, and I’ve been telling them to stop smok­ing, and explain­ing that if they con­tin­ue then there will only be an epiphany of what they did wrong when they are read­ing their epi­taph.

The title song is kind of a man­ic odd time sig­na­ture 80s sound­ing song. Mix­ing hair met­al with prog met­al here. I fig­ure we would close the album with that one and Mis­placed Man­i­festo which is an odd mix­ture of doom met­al and car­ni­val-like key­boards.

Stand­out Tracks:

• Let in Love
• Nucle­us of Chaos
• Lost in the South Bend.

Final Ver­dict: 9/10

Nucle­us of Chaos is an ambi­tious and reward­ing lis­ten. Ara­Pacis have man­aged to blend mul­ti­ple gen­res into this one album yet still main­tain their unique sound. If you are a fan of bands like Dream The­atre, Deep Pur­ple, Rain­bow and Rush, this is a must lis­ten album for you.

Read more about the band in the Fierce and Loud Inter­view. Just fol­low the link.