Mortal Prophets are back with the sprawling 16-track sound, mood, and atmosphere exploration that is "GUITARWORKS II," challenging everything you thought you knew about guitar music. At just over 50 minutes, the album features haunting textures, emotional atrophy, and spiritual reverberance that make it more than a collection of songs.
"GUITARWORKS II" revels in the musical heritage of sonic explorers. Featuring ambient echoes in the style of Brian Eno and Cluster as well as looping minimalism à la Robert Fripp, the album excels at the intersections where the known and the unformed converge. Each note feels pregnant with tension and relief, drawing the listener into a cinematic headspace, where sound itself is the narrative.
Two standout tracks, “Hopewell Culture” and “Angel Mounds,” epitomize the collection. The latter possesses the quality of ancient ritual reactivated in its layered tones and archaeological depth, as if digging something sacred out from centuries of burial. The latter, “Angel Mounds,” evokes a spectral loneliness, inspired by Jon DeRosa, a poignant portrayal of fragility with haunting beauty. These works feel living, breathing, pulsing, and shimmering in their idiosyncratic otherworldly rhythms.
Mortal Prophets maintain a blend of visceral emotion and meticulously crafted audio construction throughout the album. Each track reads like a short film, filmic in its communication of tone and imagery, yet abstract enough to feel like an open invitation for personal interpretation. There’s an otherworldly touch to the way themes of decay and regeneration are knitted into the fabric of the soundscape. This is immersive, almost spiritual music that demands the listener's full attention and presence.
In the end, "GUITARWORKS II" also further establishes Mortal Prophets as a genuine revolutionary, not so much by evolving the language of the guitar, but by fundamentally redefining how we perceive the guitar sound in the present era of music. Bold, meditative, and genre-defiant, this is music that wafts, lingers, echoes, and changes.
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