CALIGULA’S HORSE – Brisbane, Australia 10th August 2019

admin August 13, 2019 Concert Reviews

Even Caligula’s Horse frontman Jim Grey admits that tonight’s performance is a little “niche”. “I wouldn’t go!” he jokes at the crowd, who are nonetheless assembled en masse for the performance of two classic albums by the Brisbane prog metal quintet.

Those records are their 2013 album The Tide, The Thief & River’s End and its 2015 follow-up Bloom, so the gig represents a rare moment of nostalgia for the band. It’s a quick tip of the hat to the fans, before the five-piece head into the studio for the follow-up to their most recent long player, In Contact (2017).

There’s two hours’ worth of music to get through, so the support slot comes via Hazel Mei, who plays a short set at the start of the night and again in between C Horse’s two performances. Although her soulful acoustic folk is miles removed from the headliner’s complex heaviness, it actually provides a gently melodic reprieve from all the intensity going on this evening.

As C Horse’s Sam Vallen said in a recent interview with Maximum Volume, if one stripped back the arrangements of all their music, you’d find yourself a bare bones collection of songs that could be performed with nothing more than voice and piano. Likewise, Hazel’s bare two-guitars-and-voice arrangements for her performances could easily be overlayed with horns and strings or gospel choirs in an alternate universe. Her songs, ranging from pure balladry to slightly grittier R&B, take on a range of topics, from our depleting environment to lost souls who look to the bottle for answers. All of this is delivered in a powerful voice that finds the perfect balance between melodicism and emotiveness.

Caligula’s Horse are up next and decide to move chronologically backwards, starting with the Bloom album and its plaintive title track, before band staple Marigold batters everyone into submission with its blend of swirling heaviness and soaring melody. The prog ambition is turned to 11 with the epics Dragonfly and Daughter Of The Mountain, before the record’s last track (sparse ballad Undergrowth) ends the first half of the band’s double set.

There’s another quick performance from Hazel Mei as the band composes themselves for the even-more nostalgic set of songs coming up next. It’s time for 2013’s River’s End in its entirety, the first “real band” record from the band; this was the real beginning of Vallen’s and Grey’s fruitful songwriting partnership and showcased a more focused and conceptual approach to music.

While there has always been a classic ‘70s prog rock influence to C Horse’s music, for this reviewer, River’s End is where it was most apparent. This is evident in the cascading Floydian sections of instrumental Old Cracks In The New Earth and the atmospheric contrasts of Into The White.

But whatever era the band performs, the fans lap it up. This is clearly a crowd who have been with C Horse since the very beginning and the devotion is not lost on the band, who are visibly appreciative of the long-standing hometown support.

For the punters, it’s a great chance to hear long-established classics and rarely performed deep cuts by a band at the peak of their powers.