Bridges of Königsberg, The Five Colors

The Five Colors opens with a nearly six-and-a-half-minute song that’s all instrumental. This sets the entire pace for the album, which isn’t completely instrumental but definitely is for the most part. The second song (“Five Colors,” the title track) has some singing to it that brings to mind bands like Urge Overkill. “Feathers Wrapped In Metal,” “Irrational Dream,” and “Have You Ever Even Seen a Forest” also have some prominent singing. “Feathers Wrapped In Metal” and “Have You Ever Even Seen a Forest” actually remind me a lot of The Hold Steady, or that one radio song The Airborne Toxic Event had that sounded kind of like The Hold Steady-meets-Coyote Shivers.

These songs have mostly a dark rock sound. Without vocals, they sound at times like you could be playing Castlevania. At times with the vocals, I tend to lead towards Nine Inch Nails (especially on “Irrational Dream” and the vocals there, for some reason). While the first song starts off slow, the general vibe of the album becomes mellow and somewhat trippy at times — dare I say “stoner rock”? — but it keeps a steady pace and for the most part neither slows down nor speeds up too much. It’s a good middle-of-the-road tempo.

In many ways, the music itself (all vocals aside) reminds me of something that could be orchestrated by mewithoutYou. I guess the complex song structures and rather lengthy numbers also reinforce that idea.

Ultimately, though, this album doesn’t really jump out at me and scream “Like me! You must like me!” I didn’t have it on as background music, but I couldn’t really see it as anything other than that, because nothing really stands out to me and makes me say, “Oh, I’ve got to hear that again.”

The one bright moment throughout these eleven songs that really does stand out to me is the aforementioned “Irrational Dream,” which sometimes has female vocals accompanying the male vocals. It starts out like a somewhat normal song, has this huge gap without vocals, and then comes back to where it left off in the beginning. The song itself is just over eight minutes long and is an epic opus, but alas, one song does not make an entire album.

If you like that sort of dark rock/metal/stoner rock/trippy kind of whatever…then you’d probably be into this. Maybe if you’re a goth video game nerd and you’re sick of hearing the same songs over and over on your newest game, then you should put this on in the background, instead. Or maybe you’d like this if you’re fifteen years old and having a makeout/getting stoned party in your stepdad’s basement.