Azure - Fym [Album Release] - discomfortwingss Webseite!

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Photos: © Broken by the Scream

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Fantasy Progressive Rock

"We can’t believe we finally get to share this music. We’ve been so excited about it since we had the songs in their most basic notated forms, and the excitement hasn’t died down one bit since!" The group already started the first plans for the album Fym already back in 2020!

Back story

Formed in 2015 in the UK, Azure have made a name for themselves as one of the most adventurous, emotional, and unpredictable acts of the modern Progressive scene. Since the release of 2021’s ‘Of Brine and Angel’s Beaks’, Azure has been undergoing a musical evolution – first hinted at in 2021’s single ‘Mistress’, then again in 2022’s ‘Spark Madrigal’. Themes of fantasy and traditional prog rock remained present, but sections of intense atonal and bitonal harmony became a dark counterpoint to the melodic or playful moments in Azure’s music.

Back in April 2024, Azure announced to partnering with the Japanese record label Marquee/Avalon.

Fym - album concept

‘Fym’ is Azure’s third album, as well as their first fully committed concept album. A culmination of years of musical fantasy offerings (as well as linked fantasy novel), Fym is a start to finish concept album, told across the most colourful, pained, and complex backdrops of the band’s discography so far. As influences, they described that Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) and Togashi (HunterXHunter) had an massive impact in their works.

‘This album has pushed us beyond

anything we’ve ever done.

Our performances, our emotions, our writing –

everything had to go to the next level

to bring this concept to life.’

‘Weight of the Blade’, released on April 12th, is the true ‘single’ of the album. This heavy-prog singalong is a continuation of the mourning, guilt, and woe of the 3-part suite, directed now into a power-metal/prog lovechild with more standard harmony and melody writing, as well as some of Azure’s most blistering lead-sections to date.

The album includes a storytelling journey, where Fym was just always such an appealing character to write about, to explore musical emotion through. The next thing you know is, that she’s treading every corner of the map, learning sorcery, using her knowledge to locate all these shards of Umbra. In a story like this, there’s all these different types of wonder, joy, and pain, which each lend themselves to all this musical opportunity.

"So this album is energetically, and stylistically, all over the place! Definitely not for everyone, but it’s everything to us. We’ve just been digging for all the emotion and intent that we love in our favourite records from the 70s and 80s, and letting that kind of playing happen in this modern fantasy context! It ended up taking a few years for us to get it right, but we’re so proud of how it’s turned out."

A must listen!

I think, this record is absolutly amazing! Just by hearing the first tunes of "Weight of the Blade" - my mind were directly in thoughts of Final Fantasy. All in all, it has an great story through out the story line. Between the tunes, you can hear/ read the magical journey through the tracks, that represents different emotions of the main character as well different music genres! The guitar soli were outstanding - it really takes you song by song to an unknown place of never seen paths!

If you are curious now, please check out Azure’s newest record!