Epicloud is the spiritual successor to Addicted, and this is made abundantly clear at every possible turn. Anneke takes more of a backseat this time around, but her vocals still deliver that undeniable “Addicted” sound. This time around, we’ve got a full choir (!!!) to add to the wall of sound. Honestly, the choir is enough to make Epicloud stand out apart from its peers. Even though Deconstruction had a choir through a lot of the festivities, Epicloud’s choir has more of a gospel feel to it that blows Deconstruction’s out of the water. While it most closely resembles Addicted, there are plenty of moments on Epicloud that recall the heavier, riff driven moments of Deconstruction, and even the calmness of Ghost. Ki’s sound isn’t really represented at all, but we’ll get there.
Really, if “arena rock” is an accepted genre of music, I would call Epicloud “arena metal.” So many of Epicloud’s most defining moments come in the choruses of Where We Belong, Grace, and Hold On. Devin said that he mixed it like usual, but tried to keep it so that you could really turn it up without getting grating. Epicloud’s a great album to take on road trips, blasting out the rolled down windows in the middle of summer. The loud parts of this album are the very definition of “larger than life.” Much like Addicted, we have multiple “metal-infused pop songs” like Save Our Now and Hold On. Save Our Now is a personal highlight for it’s use of the standard “pop drum beat” and proving that you can still write a “simple” song with emotion and artistic integrity. The chord progressions on Epicloud are mostly rather pedestrian, but they’ve got a few twists and turns for the seasoned music listener. This is an album to put on when you just need something loud and easy to follow. It’s the polar opposite of most of Devin’s heavier albums, but it’s a nice change of pace from the impenetrability of Deconstruction.
For the harcore Dev fan, the real draw to this album is the remade version of Kingdom. A fan favorite, Kingdom’s only real weakness is that it’s stuck on an album surrounded by mediocrity and mixed like horse shit. This time, it’s given the enormous, bombastic production that it deserves, to tremendous success. I remember when it first came out, some were crying foul claiming that it felt out of place and disruptive in the middle of Epicloud, but I think it works just as well as Hyperdrive! did on Addicted.
The only real Deconstruction-like moments on Epicloud are in True North, which has a pounding, angular riff that wouldn’t feel out of place in Stand. Grace, the other major centerpiece of the album has a slightly off-kilter rhythmic motif that goes throughout the song, with huge, arena-metal vocals and a production style that pretty much defines the word “Epic.” Grace is really tough to classify. Obviously, a song like Divine or even Liberation would probably be considered more immediately accessible than Grace, but Grace is like an accessible version of a standard “Dev-metal” song. Like, a more stripped down version of Deconstruction. There’s plenty of layers all over it, but it’s so much easier to follow than any song on Deconstruction. I see a lot of complaints that Grace is actually “too” simple, but that’s exactly the point of Epicloud.
I don’t listen to Epicloud all that often, to be honest. I absolutely love it whenever I put it on, though. It’s pretty much the easy-listening version of Devin Townsend, and that’s not a bad thing.
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