Capsule is a band that never got the props they deserved. Their albums are intense and memorable, having lost none of their power over the past decade and a half-ish. 2008’s Blue was the first to win me over. From the day the CD arrived in the mail (which was how we did things in my day), and I had no idea who Capsule was, what I did have was sort of a list of demands for what I wanted it to be. And it passed my expectations.
I was at a point where I was eager to hear something which would stretch the boundaries a little further of the saturated metal/metalcore/everything-in-between world. I wanted to hear a change from the standard formulas, and what I found here was a slab of sound that interjected time signature changes faster than I could comprehend the beat to tap my feet along to. Along with those very sped up passages, perhaps surprisingly I found very slowed down rhythms too. Yes, Blue is both a very fast and a very slow album. There are parts that genuinely require patience upon first listen. But after a few spins those are just the two sides of this complex album, and it’s all great.
First encountering the album in 2008: An explosion of notes and grindy rhythms surged from my speakers, kicking off an intense half-hour-plus of music. I managed an awkward head-nod in support of a groove in the second track, “Cobalt Connection”, sustaining that for about a minute before the third track, “There’s Another Word For This” sprang forth and I decided to give my neck a quick rest (icing it? Or am I just filtering this through my now-40-year-old mind?) …Alright I’m older now than I was then, in a dorm room being told by some RA to “Turn it down NOW!”, but I hope my 21-year-old self wouldn’t be all that embarrassed to see me still moving to these awesome songs.
I do remember that while I always appreciated the absolute ass-kicking of the grindier bits that propel the first four songs to (roughly) six minutes of bliss-inducing chaos, on that fifth track, “Determinal”, the gamechanger, I was scratching my head. If that first section of the album had been defined by its speed and breakneck time changes, this point in the album marks a distinct switch at about the 0:53 mark. Now I see this slowdown as an added layer of depth, but I didn’t really view it that way at the time. The passage that follows is an almost laboriously slow and repetitive dirge carrying the song to nearly nine minutes in length (roughly four times the length of any of the previous songs on the album.)
2008-Me thought the momentum of the album was completely dead. I was building these compartments for how to categorize this group Capsule and they were a fast band; but then 6 minutes later I wasn’t sure anymore that this definition stuck. Did my listening brain not know how to go in more than one direction over the course of an album? Or was my attention span just that incredibly short that if a tempo slowed, I saw a butterfly or hummingbird or something outside and got completely distracted?
Well I don’t know what changed except that it took a repeat listen or two. The intentional slowing down of the record no longer presents a problem for me but instead a virtue of some sort. Now it’s more like Capsule shows they can do more than one thing and can still hold your attention.
The even slower “Blue/Green” follows “Determinal” and it’s a hypnotic, guitar-only piece you can really get lost in. And so that’s why the following “Flowerpower” packs a gut-punch moments when it springs back into that original chaotic grindy sound. It’s like some tension built up and exploded. (“Flowerpower” eventually slows the pace down too but by this point into the album it should be evident that this is how Capsule rolls.)
Blue just works for me. I’ve got to say even the album artwork, a dark blue face / skull-thing against a solid black background, with no band name or album title or other distinguishing information, is quite memorable to me. When I listen to the music I automatically think “that’s some dark blue face / skull-thing material.” It just looks sort of iconic.
In 2011, Capsule would release the follow-up, the equally awesome No Ghost. One thing I will say about No Ghost is that if you gave Blue a shot but never could get around the dramatic tempo change parts, if you, like 2008-Me, thought they killed the momentum and just wanted a tempo that jumped forward consistently, No Ghost might be a better Capsule album for you. To me they’re both killer albums.
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