[::] are an instrumental post-metal band from Poland. This is their debut album.

Pronounced 4 Dots, the band features an ex-member of the mighty Obscure Sphinx, which immediately made me keen to find out what they had to offer on this release.

The album reveals itself to be a good progressive mix of different expansive post-metal and post-rock styles. The songs on this album are enjoyable and engaging exemplars of how a band can create effective instrumental music without overly sounding like anyone else. Sure, there are aspects of bands like Russian Circles and Neurosis in their sound, but it’s rare to find any band with no reminders of anyone else at all.

With intricate drumming, complex arrangements and infectious bass, the band produce some interesting and involving music across the 45 minutes on this album.

Largely, the drums and bass seem to form the foundation of the tracks, with the guitars providing additional sounds and layers to this worthy pairing. These two main instruments complement each other so very well on these songs. Truly, it’s a thing of beauty in some places. I have soft spot for bands that go the drums-and-bass-only route, and it’s great to hear essentially that performed here, only enhanced with guitars that don’t act as the main focus a lot of the time.

This slightly unusual sound that the band have created is definitely a main contributor to them standing out from a lot of ostensibly similar instrumental bands out there. In a well-saturated scene [::] have managed to hit on a sound, (through lots of trial, error and experimentation I’m sure), that is reminiscent of others in some ways, but is also largely their own.

I very much enjoyed this. Make sure you check out [::].