Steve Hackett
Surrender Of Silence
(InsideOut)
9/10
By Decibel Report

As a nonpareil innovator of electric and acoustic guitar techniques and progressive musical stylings, Steve Hackett has crafted a late-period renaissance since his 2009 Out Of The Tunnel's Mouth release. Creatively expanding his musical horizons with a seemingly indefatigable curiosity for instrumentation and musical self-mastery, Surrender Of Silence takes another giant stride forward furthering the peak of his creative visions. Artistically, he is the master of all that he surveys with his previous four electric band-based studio albums comfortably entering the Top 40. His recent acoustic release, Under A Mediterranean Sky, creditably hovered just outside of this industry landmark. SOS should, at the very least, maintain his purple patch and most likely improve upon his current high profile.

As a top-rank member of progressive rock royalty, Hackett deservedly views his widening musical landscape from a mountain range of stellar artistic achievements. Not only does he sedulously preserve the classic era Genesis canon, but he also makes music that has evolved from this much-loved period of musical adventure. His followers will rightly indulge themselves in these songs that are a cosmic round-up of all the stylistic musical themes that Hackett has been cultivating over the past couple of decades.

Intensity and space also co-exist here as Hackett harmonises opposites from the brooding guitar and concussive, percussive opener The Obliterati to the acoustic lull of closer Esperanza. This album is brim-full of cataclysmic soundscape structures throughout particularly on The Devil's Cathedral, with a magnificent arch vocal by Nad Sylvan, The Day Of the Dead, and the nightmarish Natalia.

The sonic surprises and exotic journeys of sound on Wingbeats, with its African rhythms, and the dramatic cornucopia of instrumental excellence on Shanghai To Samarkand finds Hackett conducting an anarchic harmony of sounds. All this beautifully evokes a timeless sense of place as he travels across strange and intriguing musical plains. Surrender Of Silence also contains his largest retinue of contributing musicians with three masters of the drums (Craig Blundell, Phil Ehart, and Nick D'Virgilio) plus the McBroom sisters on backing vocals and more outré performers of instrumentation from around the globe including the Dutar and the Tar, no less. Hackett regulars Roger King, Rob Townsend, and Amanda Lehmann are joined by recent touring bassist Jonas Reingold who, along with Sylvan, provide musical continuity from stage to studio.

There's a spacious, strange beauty that seeps from the speakers on Relaxation Music For Sharks (Featuring Feeding Frenzy) in which Hackett and Co. create an otherworldly, underwater mini-opera instrumental of dangerous sound waves. Held In Shadows collides opposites of the sound scale with a gentle, descending guitar motif detonated by a mammoth combination of percussion and guitar riffing that continues on Fox's Tango on which Hackett sings like a medallioned rock singer of yore.

Then, as if in one intense blinding flash, Scorched Earth blasts from studio to speaker to the following ear with its cautionary climate/war tale; to be tamed by the soft acoustics of Esperanza to close-out a singular and regal recording.