Cerulia-The Wishing Tree Volume II: The Birth of a Titan

Koala Chowder Records
2012

Last Friday night, August 2nd of 2013 to be more precise, I headed down to a small club in Kent, Ohio (my old college town) to catch a live show by my friends in The Approach and the Execution. Among the other opening acts, as the headliners were actuary the rather cool Erasing Never, was a 4-piece band by the name of Cerulia. Having never heard of them before that night I didn't quite know what to expect. Dressed in outfits that would seem to be more befitting for a emo act, or perhaps even something as simple as a college rock outfit, this four piece band quickly proved that any assumptions on my part were way off! For that I do apologize to these Knoxville, Tenn. natives. For you see, once the band hit the first opening notes of their set it was game on! In a word these 4 band mates were HEAVY. Imagine a cross between post-metal, progressive metal and death thrash with both clean and harsh vocals and you would be close to what these guys were laying down for the small crowd in attendance. As they had CDs for sale I quickly snatched up this 5-track release for future listening pleasure. It was Saturday before I had a chance to slide the disc into my stereo and take a look at the actually CD packaging. Two things then struck me. The first was that Cerulia was a Christian act. From the band-mates themselves: "Cerulia's music is based around a story line that incorporates American folklore, Greek Mythology, and Biblical History. The Wishing Tree series follows the lives of characters Zedekiah Arnold (The Titan), Nanabozho (The Demon), and James Paul Bunyan and John Henry (The Sons of Thunder).". That's all cool by me. The second thing that stood out was the fact that the actual music on the CD was a bit more mellow. Hold on though for you see that was actually a good thing. The four members of Cerulia are still kicking out some sick post-metal/progressive rock on "The Wishing Tree Volume II: The Birth of a Titan" (which is incidentally their debut-release), but here in these 5 tracks there was a lot of experimenting going on. The music is well-crafted with more then enough technically savvy playing to appease progressive metal fans while it's keen sense of melody, and the occasional rock-like song structures should easily draw in the heavy rock crowd. With clean vocals, and even cleaner cord changes, and lyrics that offer universal appeal this is one band and one CD that I'm glad I took a chance on!
http://cerulia.bandcamp.com/album/the-wishing-tree-vol-ii-the-birth-of-a-titan