Let's return to our
Album title: Clone
Artist: Threshold
Nationality: English
Year: 1998
Chronology: 4
The Trollheart Factor: 10
Track Listing: Freaks/Angels/The Latent Gene/Lovelorn/Change/Life’s Too Good/Goodbye Mother Earth/Voyager II/Sunrise on Mars
Comments: The first album to feature the late Andrew “Mac” Macdonald after the departure of original vocalist Damien Wilson, this loses none of the heaviness or power of previous albums, a gritty, snarly guitar getting “Freaks” underway, the album a sort of concept following the idea of genetic manipulation and, well, cloning. Basically Threshold seem to look on this as a bad thing in general, the whole idea of not playing God written large across the lyrics. A warning about going too far, “Freaks” sets out the band’s view on things, and this continues into “Angels”, opening with a dolorous muted organ from Richard West, rocking along with intent with some great growling guitar work from Groom (yes I know that’s a lot of alliteration) - I’d have to be honest though and say it’s not one of my favourite tracks.
Not so for “The Latent Gene”, another fast rocker which features a truly beautiful midsection where everything slips right back before picking up again for the end of the song, and into “Lovelorn”, one of the more dramatic tracks on the album, with a rising guitar intro and then kind of echoey, haunting guitar backing the opening and some fine keyboard flourishes from West. That takes us to the first ballad, a simple little love song called “Change”, which shows that not everything these guys do has to be layers of keyboard or guitars and vocal harmonies, intricate time signatures or power chords. Kind of reminds me of “Flags and Footprints” again from
Subsurface in certain places.
Pedal back to the floor then for “Life’s Too Good”, until things begin to slow down for”Goodbye Mother Earth”, which quickly picks up on Groom’s rocking guitar, but does indeed slow down for a rather stunning midsection and there’s a slow, almost sad fadeaway into the epic, “Voyager II” which seems to continue the theme, even the story begun in the previous track. Warbly keyboards and hard guitar chops open the song before it settles down on introspective guitar and generally takes a slower, more sedate path through its nine-minute run. Just as you think it too is fading out accompanied by radio chatter the melody comes back, a sort of chanting, howling vocal accompanied by grinding piano. The album then ends on one more ballad, one of my very favourite Threshold songs, “Sunrise on Mars".
Beginning and indeed ending all but acapella, it’s driven mostly on West’s lonely piano, with an evocative guitar solo by Groom near the end that just takes your breath away. I’m not all that happy about how it ends though, as it seems to just fizzle out and wastes the big build-up that went before it.
Track(s) I liked: Everything, with the possible exception of
Track(s) I didn't like: maybe “Angels”
One standout: “Sunrise on Mars”
One rotten apple: nah
Overall impression: A great album, very much worthy of Threshold. Can’t quite follow the concept but that doesn’t matter. The change of vocalist didn’t throw me, as I had begun listening to them via
Subsurface, with Mac on vox.
Rating: 9.4/10