(written by Islander)
We don’t need to be mind-readers to fathom why Tom “Fountainhead” Geldschläger named his new project and its debut album Changeling. Like the legend from European folklore, it has the musical presence of a supernatural shape-shifter whose diabolical essence diverged from the shapes that disguised it in place of the humans spirited away — except there’s no real disguise here, because the music strikingly and abundantly seems well beyond the capabilities of base-level humans.
Changeling is an entirely fitting name, but Fountainhead might also have chosen the name Phileas Fogg, the adventurous creation of Jules Verne who accepted a wager to go Around the World in Eighty Days. That idea comes to mind because the album, in its many changing escapades, in some ways does seem like a globe-spanning, head-spinning tour by ground, air, water, and subterranean passages, spanning different cultures, different sights, and different dangers.
Except this grand tour will only take you an hour, an hour very well spent, as you’ll discover today through our complete premiere of Changeling in advance of its April 25th release by Season of Mist.
Fountainhead should need no introduction to denizens of extreme metal realms, having made his mark through both Akróasis-era Obscura, live performances with the likes of Defeated Sanity, Belphegor, and many others, as well as his prolific session work with a host of other groups. Fretless guitar virtuosity has become his calling card.
We’re told that he composed every note on Changeling, but he didn’t take this tour alone, and certainly didn’t lack for enthusiastic fellow travelers. The core lineup on the album (an eye-popping one) includes drummer Mike Heller (ex-Fear Factory, Malignancy, Raven), fretless bassist Arran McSporran (Vipassi, Virvum), and lead vocalist and lyricist Morean (Alkaloid, Dark Fortress).
But in addition to them, Changeling also features dozens of guest performers, including guitar solos by Andy Laroque (ex-Death, King Diamond), Bill Hudson (Trans-siberian Orchestra, Doro, I am Morbid), and Jason Gobel (ex-Cynic, ex-Monstrosity), as well as numerous other vocalists and instrumentalists.
And speaking of guest instrumentation, the complete list includes tabla, hangdrum, dabouka, riq, shakers, marimba, violin, viola, cello, piano, glockenspiel, vibraphone, flute, trumpet, tubas, trombone, oboe, clarinet, upright bass, and church organ. Fountainhead himself performed fretted and fretless electric and acoustic guitars, oud, and keyboards.
There’s also a 50-person choir, in addition to operatic guest vocalists.
So you see, starting off tentatively or modestly obviously wasn’t part of the Changeling blueprint. Audacity is the name of this game.
photo by Natalia Kempin
The results, as already previewed, defy succinct description. That much is already obvious to people who’ve heard the three singles released in the runup to Changeling‘s release. Metal is of course a backbone of the album, despite what someone might guess after reading that list of guest instruments above. This was laid bare in “Abyss“, the album’s lead single.
As described upon its release, it includes “cavernous vocals, crushing guitars, gravity-defying orchestration and a microtonal choir inspired by avant-garde composer György Sándor Ligeti.” It’s also deeply chilling, thanks to Morean‘s haunting gasps, eerily shimmering sonic mists, and mutating forms of whining, moaning, and crashing dissonance.
The fretless bass provides moments of beguiling warmth, and the jazzy soloing is equally beguiling; but the music is also brutish and bludgeoning, frantic and feverish, gnashing and battering — and nightmarishly hallucinatory. “Abyss” arrived with a great video too.
If you listened to “Falling In Circles“, the single that followed “Abyss“, you might have gotten whiplash. While “Abyss” was in most respects mind-bendingly monstrous, “Falling In Circles” is an exultant high-speed freakout. Fountainhead describes the main guitar riff as “a super sped up interpolation of ‘Akroasis‘”, which he wrote during his time in Obscura.
The swirling and darting fretwork is dazzling, a showcase for the talents that quickly elevated Fountainhead‘s name as a guitar virtuoso, and Morean‘s soaring singing adds to the song’s exuberance, even though the lyrics, like all of them on the album, signify dark and distressing thoughts. And before the song ends, it too becomes dark and demented. Yet another great video for this one too:
And then came the title track, which would have produced more whiplash among people following the singles. To quote again from SOM‘s preview: “Inspired by Lovecraftian horror, existential philosophy, and the bizarre hallucinations of a consciousness torn apart, its progressive structure mirrors the chaotic beauty of the lyrics, pulling you into an unsettling yet mesmerizing new dimension through the use of microtonal synthesizers, ritualistic vocals, oriental percussion and a full choir.”
In Morean‘s lyrics, we also have an interpretation of the project’s references to changelings, not as fiendish creatures taking the place of human bodies but as clandestine souls begotten by void and vengeance rising from below and “usurping the holiest of hearts” — “and no one shall know.”
As for the music, Fountainhead has explained that its genesis was in a few musical themes he had written on the oud. It evolved from there in fascinating and disconcerting ways. In its final form, it is indeed a macabre shapeshifter, both instrumentally and vocally — hulking in its heaviness and frighteningly bizarre in its dissonant note-permutations, but with moments of extravagant wonder and violent delirium, as well as an unexpected but welcome “world music” diversion from the manifold horrors. By the end, it sounds like the fragmentation of reality has become complete.
And now you get to take the rest of the tour — seven more tracks from the album in addition to those three. Carefully taking them one by one would turn this preview into a novella, so we won’t do that. A few hints will have to do.
Those seven include a trio of relatively brief instrumental pieces. They run a wide-ranging gamut of towering monstrosity and brain-warping psychedelia (the opener “Introject“), a sprightly but unnerving instrumental of piano and strings (the mid-album “Metanoia Interlude“), and a mesmerizing but mournful and ultimately very ominous union of (among other things) classical strings, tubas, horns (the “Cathexis Interlude” nearer the end).
photo by Chris Hesse (Strangeworks)
Those seven also include the nearly 17-minute-long closer “Anathema“. By then, given how extravagant the preceding tour has already been, most listeners will already have slack jaws and the whites of their eyes showing all ’round, as well as difficulty getting control of their balance. But it seems that Fountainhead didn’t want to end Changeling without picking up the baton from “Weltseele” on Akroasis and continuing to run with it.
At a very high level it could be considered a daunting and time-spanning symphonic metal epic, but its manifold changes and rich intricacies trace a labyrinthine course through the grand narrative. It pulls together all the elaborate elements of progressive metal, death metal, jazz-fusion, world music, and complex orchestration (as well as the wide-ranging vocals) that have already become signal features of previous songs and launches them into the stratosphere.
Once upon a time there were “rock operas”. “Anathema” is like that, brought forward to the present day, and propelled into the future. In an album of many pinnacles, it’s the highest peak.
The album encompasses a great many other harrowing and jubilant wonders not mentioned here, laid out in a way that makes it difficult to guess what will come next but relentlessly exciting to find out. “Ambitious” doesn’t begin to cover it. It boggles the mind to imagine how much time and care must have been devoted to the songwriting and the execution, especially with such an enormous cast of characters.
And with that, we invite you to join a truly extraordinary circumnavigation of musical spheres and let yourselves be changed and spirited away by it:
Changeling is being released by Season of Mist on double-vinyl LP, CD, and digital formats.
Changeling is also releasing transcription books — a 500-page guitar transcription book that Tom Fountainhead wrote, and a 75-page edition for bass written by Changeling bassist Arran McSporran. Those will be available at the album’s release. On May 23rd an even more massive edition will be released which includes guitar, bass, drums (transcribed by Fenix Gayed), orchestral arrangements, vocals, lyrics and detailed liner notes from Tom. All physical copies will be personally signed and include a free download of the digital version. They can be pre-ordered through the second link below.
PRE-ORDER/PRE-SAVE:
https://orcd.co/changelingchangeling
https://changelingmerch.bigcartel.com/
FOLLOW FOUNTAINHEAD & CHANGELING:
Website: http://www.thefountainhead.de
Facebook: http://facebook.com/tomfountainheadgeldschlaeger
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/changeling.official
Bandcamp: https://changelingofficial.bandcamp.com/