Review Summary: Magnificent sophomore album from one of the best bands in Britain
Everyone Into Position was the follow up to Oceansize's brilliant 2003 debut Effloresce. Often said to be a band's most difficult record, the second album's objective is to progress and evolve the music from the original release, while staying true to the band's musical foundations. In this sense, Everyone Into Position is an absolute triumph.
The signature Oceansize sound of three guitars intertwining over complex time signatures is back with a vengeance on opening track 'The Charm Offensive', a tour-de-force of everything wonderful about this band. Beginning with a hypnotic, groovy guitar line set against an ominous drum beat, the song twists and turns until reaching its conclusion, a heart-shredding crescendo which spills into a giant guitar riff that sounds like it could destroy worlds, with vocalist Mike Vennart screaming in the background.
It seems on this record that Vennart has found far greater confidence as the band's voice compared to the previous effort, with fewer instrumental tracks and much deeper lyrical themes. The consequence being that Everyone Into Position is a much more diverse album than Effloresce, with the more commercial-sounding 'Heaven Alive' (probably one of the album's weaker moments), and the wonderful 'Meredith', which sees Vennart singing in an uncharacteristic yet haunting falsetto.
Vennart's lyrics have always been fairly abstract and hard to decipher, but on Everyone Into Position the concepts seem to have grown much larger. While Effloresce was generally focused on the personal, this album tackles religious and political authority, while the album's stunning closer 'Ornament/The Last Wrongs' is a beautiful yet heart-breaking comment on the ultimate futility of life.
There are two major criticisms I would make of this album. Firstly, it has more "weaker" songs than Effloresce and as a result it is not as consistent, meaning it probably doesn't flow quite as well. The second is that it suffers from what one might call "Reign In Blood Syndrome". What I mean by this is that the album's two bookends, opener 'The Charm Offensive' and closer 'Ornament/The Last Wrongs', are stunningly good songs and by far better than anything else on the album. While I'm not saying the rest of the album isn't very very good, these two tracks give the impression that it's better than it actually is.
Everyone Into Position is a clear step forward from Effloresce and an encouraging sign from a very exciting band (who went on to release the brilliant Frames in 2007, but I shan't get into that). It's not a classic and it's certainly flawed, but it has so many moments that are so sublime you'll stop caring about its faults and just enjoy what this band is capable of.
