Los Angeles’ ANCESTORS create mighty, modern music that dovetails slow, heavy riffs and atmospheric, melodic instrumental passages, exuding a deep sense of melancholy.
Six years have passed since the band’s previous album, In Dreams and Time, which came at a transitional and difficult time in each of the band members’ lives. In those six years, the band has slimmed down from a 5-piece to a 3-piece, also adding drummer (Daniel Pouliot of HORSE THE BAND and ex-SILVER SNAKES) to their ranks. This lineup has consciously taken their time in writing their 5th album. It was surely worth the wait: 'Suspended in Reflections' is a culmination of everything the band have accomplished thus far. It feels like ANCESTORS have finally arrived at their own, right place.
“I think that as songwriters we’ve grown exponentially over the past six years,” comments guitarist and vocalist Justin Maranga… “but the most important change was the removal of ego from the writing and recording process. We tried to step out from behind our respective instruments to write the best album we could. We made a beautiful record as a team.”
ANCESTORS’ soundscapes are slow and vast, melancholic, dreamy and heavy, all at the same time: fertile soil for venturing outside of the typical realms of rock and metal instrumentation. The jazzy bass lines in Release and the proggy strings in Into the Fall prove that the 3-piece is not confined to any specific genre of music. The use of an Aeolian-Skinner church organ, however – an instrument with close to 1.941 pipes – woven throughout the album, is the proof that these excursions are not blind experiments, but landmarks of a sonic path that this band has carefully chosen.
