Caligula’s Horse – Charcoal Grace: New Album News

By At The Barrier on 15th November 2023 • ( Leave a comment )

Australian progressive metal outfit Caligula’s Horse are back!

Well, we sort of knew, having been blown away by their set at RADAR… The four-piece prog metal raiders from Brisbane, Caligula’s Horse now herald a new chapter with a new single and video release for Golem and album announcement for Charcoal Grace, which is set for release on 26th January 2024 via InsideOutMusic.

Their sixth album Charcoal Grace is described by the band as: “the grim allure and strange beauty in stillness, silence, and loss.” This can be heard through the album’s 10-minute opening track The World Breathes With Me, a mission statement for the album’s main themes. Musically, it’s a work of contrasts, moving from the lightest ebb to the heaviest flow.

There’s a real ambition, with the centrepiece of the album being the 4-part title track suite – a 24-minute opus that pushes deeper into the album’s foundational themes: connection, alienation, and the ways humanity acts under duress. Musically, it covers every facet of the band’s vocabulary, from heavy and dense orchestral-accompanied intensity embodying the song’s darkest lyrical ideas, through to soft acoustic-driven moments and introspection.

Meanwhile, the second track and first single from the album, Golem, examines struggling with the weight of expectation through the pandemic. It’s a heavy song with an emphasis on riffs and driving rhythms.

Here’s the video for Golem – Love the typeface on the logo. Very Tool-esque: