Tired of being pigeon-holed (pelican-holed?) as an ambient metal band, Chicago's Pelican has decided to cut the metallic noodle-jams for its third long player City of Echoes. As guitarist Laurent Lebec recently told VH1, "We definitely wanted to write shorter songs that got to the point a little quicker dynamically and pleased us as a live band as opposed to what we were before this record, which was a band that toured rarely and indulged itself in the studio. When we were touring for our last album, The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw, even if we had a 75-minute-long set, we could only play five songs because they were all so long, and that can be tiring for an audience."
The change in Pelican's flight path may alienate some of the indie and post-rock fans that got turned on to the intrumental metal epics of their earlier releases. Another crowd that's been particularly hard to please: fans of the progressive metal act Opeth, who taunted Pelican with curse words and cries of "You guys look like Weezer" when Pelican opened for Opeth on a recent San Francisco tour stop.
Pelican's new album City of Echoes comes out on June 5th from Hydrahead Records.
[Pelican Getting Sick Of Weezer Comparisons (VH1)]