Cyclamen - Senjyu review

They Say :-Following on from the success of the 'Dreamers' EP earlier this year, London based Japanese technical mastermind, Hayato Imanishi returns with his CYCLAMEN moniker to deliver the much anticipated debut album, 'Senjyu'.

Born and raised in Japan before venturing to the UK when he was 13 years old, Hayato initially started CYCLAMEN as a solo bedroom project, before quickly realising that there was a much wider scope for the interesting new take he was bringing to the genre.

Frustrated with not being able to hear the kind of music he personally wanted to enjoy, Hayato set about amassing a plethora of gifted and revered musicians from the very start (including Mikee Goodman from SikTh and Travis Orbin, ex-Periphery), which quickly developed CYCLAMEN into a truly credible and multi-national collective.

We Say :-Hayato Imanishi is clearly a very talented young man. We first came across him and his one-man project Cyclamen on the split EP with Haunted Shores which, while technically excellent, sounded more than a little like SikTh.

Fast forward a year and we were keen to check out Senjyu, Hoyato's debut full length album, and if you are familiar with his previous Djent metalcore stylings and are expecting more of the same it's fair to say you are in for something of a surprise.

The Djent influences are still clearly there, but they are now part of a much more wide ranging soundscape that goes from ambient musings to full on metalcore. It sounds like an odd mix, and indeed it is, but it works extremely well.

The album was written and produced by Hayato, who also handles the wide variety of vocal styles on show. After 2 years as a solo project Cyclamen have now expanded into a 'proper' band with Ed Newman on bass and Duncan Lee on drums with Nano Sigo and Olly Steele on guitar, but for this release Hayato played the majority of the instruments himself. This, then, is the culmination of one man's ideas for the music they wanted to make, and also a demonstration of his considerable musical talents.

Senjyu covers an amazingly wide swathe of the musical landscape. It is highly technical as you would expect but there are also indications that Hoyato's vision is expanding beyond it's original scope. When the album opens with 'Mother', a nice laid back lullaby of a tune you realise this is not quite what you were expecting. The pace changes when that is immediately followed by the technical, angry sounding opening broadside of 'The Seeker' before that too meanders off from the course you may expect. Hell there's even some Sabbath-ey doom-ey metal in the form of instrumental track Hellride. This really is a release which keeps you wondering which direction it is headed in next.

The music on this album varies between the musical box qualities of Mother and screaming Djent-esque metalcore, stopping off at almost all points in between. If you are a slavish adherent to one genre then you will probably not like everything on this release, but if you enjoy a more balanced musical palette then the variety on offer here that I think you will find interesting.

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