TiV (Debut Album 2020)

TiV Project

Instrumental Progressive

 

Looking at the SOG World Tour map, the picture is very concentrated on Europe and North America. But there is so much more to explore. The blog AudioInferno and Rock Hard bring you closer to African heavy sound like Ayyur, Last Year’s Tragedy and Wrust. And Asia unleashes Doch Chkae, Reign In Slumber and Ritual Day.

Now from Iran, a long matured pearl has banned its Progressive music on its very first record. The band is entitled TiV Project. The logo mixes triangle forms with Persian and Latin letters. Translated ‘TiV’ means endurance, what seems quite accurate, as mastermind Hamid Malek-Lee was writing the tracks from 2006 to 2018.

Since an Iran special in the Rock Hard (like recently in Metal Hammer) in 2018 with e.g. 5grs, metal-archives.com lists 33 more formations like Arsames and War Angel. And TiV Project managed to find home at luminol Records. The Italian label is specialised in their genre, which has its pioneers in classics like Pink Floyd and King Crimson. Those references can be heard on the record.

From the beginning, musical surfaces, deliberate beats and solo guitars are responsible for the trance effect. Apart from the main Rock instruments, you can also find (synthie-)sounds like piano, glockenspiel and organ as well as a flute. Plus you can partly feel an oriental influence as well as Dark Psychedelic Hard Rock like Ghost.

For some songs, Hamid designed covers like for the mysterious and massive “Keshgan”. Trees and stars are the main objects that kind of represent the softer part. But TiV project is fast too, looking at “Born To Burn”. The following “Nexus” is a midtempo heavy rocker reminding of A7X and Metallica.

The final “Sunrise” describes the journey of the red ball over the horizon of maybe one of the attracting landscapes of the Iran like the highest mountain Damavand, the Bisheh or Margoon Waterfall or the cultural heritage Naqsh-e Rostam. A well-structured album, that doesn’t hold back anything and still is unobtrusive yet neat.