Album Review: Eunuchs – Harbour Century

Band: Eunuchs | Album: Harbour Century | Genre: Avant-prog | Year: 2024

From: Sydney, Australia | Label: Independent

For fans of: black midi, Squid, Frank Zappa

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Eunuchs are an Australian quartet who employ a whole host of assisting musicians to construct dense, symphonic soundscapes. At the heart of things, they are a rock band, but traditional rock instrumentation is often minimized or buried beneath dense layers of strings, woodwinds, and reeds. Bubbling up amidst all that is a chaotic, angry energy that provides for unique contrasting effects.

In many ways, these Aussies remind me of black midi, the foremost band in the current avant-prog scene (insofar as there even is such a scene). These guys lean even harder into non-traditional instrumentation, though. Large swathes of this album push the very definition of “rock.”

“Magic Death Sea Nemesis” opens on a dramatic note. Palm-muted guitar, brass, and demented vocals immediately lend Harbour Century a sense of weight. This heft is balanced against light, fanciful passages replete with dreamy instruments like flute and harp. This wild contrast is a rousing success. It feels coherent and purposeful. The song’s climax is especially stormy and powerful.

Fuzzy guitars and lilting wind and reed instruments weave an unorthodox opening for “Pat a Dragon”. The opening verse is stripped-back and fairly calm, but it builds to a noisy, chaotic state. “Estuary of Dreams” again starts off calmly, this time channeling a significant amount of folk influence. It’s a lovely, floating song pushed gently along by flutes, chimes, and brass. This cut is downright conventional compared to much of the rest of the album, but it’s a resounding success.

“Siren” kicks off with a jazzy blend of guitar and trumpets. The melody is infectious, and as the song progresses, it weaves in elements of 1960s psychedelia. The vocals are soulful and warm, and even as this composition delves into stranger territory, it holds together beautifully. “Magnificent Stallion” again starts on a relatively subdued note. There’s a sense of trotting and building momentum as this song progresses, and I really enjoy the rich brass arrangements.

This album’s symphonic tendencies continue on “Gnome and Fortune”. It’s a dramatic, slow-moving piece that minimizes its rock instrumentation. It reminds me of certain moments on The Wall but, y’know, good.

“Bird Angel Dynasty” has a stomping, cabaret-flavored backbone. The brass and reeds are a bit overwhelming here, but I get the sense that’s what the band was going for. This is a bristling, angry cut, with certain elements coming through as slightly distorted. Bits of klezmer scales weave themselves into the fabric of this song, and the percussion is a highlight, too.

That buzzy, indistinct distortion again features prominently on “Hierophant”. Delicate, fragile-sounding verses contrast with the lurching weight of its instrumental moments.

Closing out Harbour Century is the 17-minute “Heroin King”. Things start off slowly, with a slow and slightly morose piano passage with narration. The orchestration slowly becomes deeper and more enveloping, though the pace remains sedate. Despite not being the biggest fan of spoken word, this passage seems to work pretty well.

I do have my limits, though. This sleepy composition continues to drift along, and the narration often bleeds into the backing instrumentation. At least by the time “Heroin King” hits its midpoint, there is a sense of growing tension. Clarinets and violin build, and the once-muttered narration turns to shouting, but it ultimately doesn’t lead to much. Up until this closing piece, I was thinking this could be an album of the year contender, but “Heroin King” undercut a lot of that. It could have still been a success if it were even half its actual length.

Harbour Century is a strong record. It’s a distinctive, exciting, and affecting album, but the closing epic does too little across its runtime. The lush, complex arrangements and raw, biting vocals blend in intriguing ways, and I’m excited to see what this band gets up to in the future.

Score: 82/100