The Safety Fire - Yellowism

     It's a bit of a cartographic trope or cliche that the edges and unexplored regions of maps often have dragons drawn in or on them, leading to the phrase "here be dragons"*. Well, if I were mapping the proggy depths of the sound of today's band, I might mark the fringes with the phrase "here be moustaches".

     Check out any recent photo or video of British proggers The Safety Fire and you'll know what I'm talking about, as one or more members always seems to be sporting something hairy and hipster on their upper lip. But don't let the look fool you: The Safety Fire's debut LP Grind the Ocean was the real deal, and now they've got a solid sophomore record under their belts in the form of last month's Mouth of Swords.

     Mouth of Swords has a veritable fistful of cool parts and songs, but for today I'm going with "Yellowism" for the sheer chugga-chugga riffage quotient. It might not be the band's proggiest tune, but it's got enough heavy to make up for it. I don't know if I dig Mouth of Swords quite as much or quite as immediately as I dug Grind the Ocean, but nice meaty songs like this one certainly don't hurt.

* Let's ignore for the time being the fact that Wikipedia tells me the actual phrase "hic sunt dracones" only actually appears a couple of times on real maps, shall we?