Seven Seals - Owl Cage

Described in their press release as a record 'lost' in the void for over 14 years, the story of Cumbrian band Seven Seals, and their undying vision to see 'Owl Cage' released to a world beyond their Lakeland landscape, is one almost worthy of a film script. Now, the realisation of their dream should breathe inspiration and hope into the hearts of all artists who have experienced that sense of being worshipped as big fish in a small pond, but frustrated by a seeming inability to escape and fulfil their potential and musical destiny.
 
Produced initially in 2007 with Yorkie at Highfield Street Studios in Liverpool, and completed just before lockdown by Grant Henderson at Loom Studios in Batley, 'Owl Cage' is one of those albums that I would have dearly loved to have discovered via the late John Peel's radio show. I can just imagine listening to lead single 'Bikini', or 'Seventh Wave' (with its story of escaping from an island inspired by Henri Charrière's 'Papillon'), and enjoying John's dulcet tones urging me to go out and buy this record. In fact, the whole album has that sense of itself having been released from a time machine, exploring the aftermath of punk and new wave, but dipping provincial toes into a world inhabited by new fashions and technologies.
 
Defining the sound of Seven Seals, and the energy of 'Owl Cage' is difficult. The labels that fall most easily to hand are anarchistic post-prog, or perhaps post-hardcore, but there is something incredibly comfortable about their sound. There are flashes of Stone Roses in the basslines, XTC in their stomping urgency, and even a touch of Levellers in their political sensitivities to freedom and entrapment.
 
Either way, 'Owl Cage' is an album that should now be heard way beyond the rugged peaks of the Cumbrian countryside. From the landscape that inspired Wordsworth, Ruskin, and Wainwright, Seven Seals now undeniably deserve their own slice of poetic justice.
 
7/10