ALBUM REVIEW: Eidola – Mend


I have recently learned that “Swancore” is a genre that apparently refers to Progressive Post-Hardcore music with high-register, clean vocals. Accepting that premise, it’s easy to understand this tag being applied to Salt Lake City’s Eidola and their sixth album Mend (Blue Swans Records/ Rise Records).

Personally though, I prefer not to encourage the proliferation of sub-genre classification. So I’d rather state that Mend (with its fluttering, sunny-day, Ibiza-rave guitar lines and pristine vocals, married to complex arrangements and Metalcore bursts) comes across like a shiny Pop band with a Prog-Rock alien bursting out of their chest (somehow caught on record).

And I don’t hate it, though the spirit within me that lives off some of the harshest, noisiest music tells me I should.

Just like that stereotype of the Extreme-Metal non-believer hearing Death Metal and struggling to cope with guttural growls, my own ears are such that when I hear smooth, slickly produced (possibly autotuned) vocals á la Maroon 5, I naturally look for the nearest hill to run to.

This should naturally spell the swift rejection of Mend the moment vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Andrew Wells’ hushed croons enter the picture (after the album’s fluttering instrumental opener) on the second track “Prodigy.” But like a persistent suitor, Eidola will not be denied and in the end, I can’t resist their charms.

I guess my childhood love of Prince is coming to the surface.

As off-putting as the pop gloss of Mend might be from a Rock or Metal stance (and the record has its share of heavier guitar riffing and the occasional, rougher vocal interjections of guitarist Matthew Dommer) viewed as Pop, this is a delightfully out-there, progressive, inventive and even funky record.

So I open my heart and I let Eidola in.

The above-mentioned “Prodigy” included, there are a number of tracks on Mend that are pretty much irresistible with their catchy, toe-tapping choruses—“The Faustian Spirit”, on the back end of the record being one such example.

Nimble guitars and keyboards dance on top of intricate drum lines, before the band eases into a heavier mode without the transition feeling at all out of place.

A few tracks earlier, the piano-driven “Renaissance” does push the limits of how much sugary balladry I can take in my coffee, with lines like “I love you more than you can comprehend, I’ll be with you until the bitter end”.

But a few lyrical clunkers aside, it’s churlish to fault the band for the approach they’ve taken on Mend. Having focussed on loss and grief on last year’s Eviscerate, 2025, it seems, is the band’s year for love and forgiveness.

Positivity in music is pretty hard to pull off and while I might need to follow each listen to Mend with Temple of the Morning Star to balance my psyche, I’ll say thank you to Eidola for an unexpected smile as I stomp down the street under a cloud. Even in the midst of a Scottish winter, the light of Mend is bright enough to pierce the gloom.

Buy the album here:
https://riserecords.com/collections/artist-eidola

8 / 10
TOM OSMAN
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