Playlouder - Music is the Network

Behind the pointless pun of ‘Semi Permeable Men-Brain’ is a tough nut to crack. The song is a long and winding road through raucous prog proper and not for the faint hearted. Though strong and accomplished, it’s a slightly stodgy journey to the audacious drum-solo ending and if Diagonal have declared anything here it’s an intention to go with the prog-ram.

It could go either way from here; fortunately, things get better. It’s for the opener, really, to tune the ear, so that all the really interesting twists and turns, calls and answers, musical noodling and doodling, are free to take place later in the album.

And though it looks short on paper, it’s a pretty classic 45 and a bit minutes long, so there’s room for manoeuvre.

The delicate woodwind and key driven opening to ‘Child of the Thunder Cloud’ shows more promise. It’s a slow-burning balladesque journey that explodes into life two thirds of the way through like a reanimated, and undeniably funky, zombie.

‘Deathwatch’ is a simmering, brooding piece, and utterly unfaultable in its pacing and mood. ‘Cannon Misfire’ has the groovy gustiness of your favourite post-rock garage band and rusty retro charm to give Chrome Hoof a run for their money.

If anything is a bit at sea here, it must be the vocals. It’s not that the singing isn’t good enough, it’s just that the relatively rare outings seem unimportant in the grand scheme, and lack the potential power they could wield if planned with the same precision as all the rest of the instrumentation. Mind you, so it was with Caravan, and sometimes Jethro Tull...

It’s a minor complaint, though, and repeated listens reveal a band perfectly in tune with each other and a debut more self-assured and solid than I was expecting. These dudes can play, and nobody can take that away from them.

It’s not for me to say whether Diagonal’s explosive ‘punk prog’ is something entirely new or something entirely borrowed, (more likely a bit of both), but it’s a fresh gust of wind in an era where so much of the youth’s musical output is so firmly focussed on the eighties electro pop.

Diagonal’s collective sense of purpose is endearing, and expressed even better live, where you can see the almost intimidating array of shirts, beards and flowing locks; they are certainly a group of individuals with their own sense of cool, and that unity shines through on this eponymous opus. By the awesomely-indulgent dying strains of ‘Pact’, I’ll bet you’ll want to rewind and start all over again.