www.themetallist.com
SAOR - Interview with Andy Marshall
EN UA
TEMIC — Ceiba

TEMIC

Ceiba (2026)

Label: Season of Mist
★★★★½ 9/10
By Scorpio

Track Listing

  1. Asunder
  2. Ashes
  3. Beyond the Voice
  4. Ceased To Be
  5. Broken
  6. Casting Stone
  7. See Myself
  8. Parting the Waves Inside
  9. Night of Veils
  10. Alone
  11. As Long As We Last

Keyboardist Diego Tejeida and guitarist Eric Gillette met in 2017 as touring members of Mike Portnoy's SHATTERED FORTRESS. In the 2020 lockdown they finally started writing together, and with drummer Simen Sandnes and singer Fredrik Klemp they became TEMIC. Their debut, Terror Management Theory, came out on Season of Mist in November 2023, with a guest, Jacob Umansky, on bass. Ceiba, out October 2 on the same label, is their second album and the first with a full-time bassist, Miguel Pereira. It is also long: eleven tracks and just under 66 minutes, with four songs past the seven-minute mark.

The band call Ceiba "a concept album about loss in all its various forms." "Loss is so universal that it will always be a natural part of our lives, like a tree," Tejeida says. The ceiba is sacred in Maya culture, a tree that links the earth with heaven and the underworld, and the cover shows one being split by lightning. "Asunder," a minute and a half long, starts right there. It opens with a thunderclap — I take it to be the thunder that follows the lightning on the cover — and a man reads a short poem over it: the strike, the tree mourning until dawn, its roots shaking, and the start of a journey through loss.

"Ashes" is the first full song and one of my favorites here. The chorus is catchy and melodic, and at around 3:25 a guitar solo hands over to a keyboard solo. "Beyond the Voice" starts very quietly on slightly distorted keyboards. A minute in, the guitars arrive with a powerful vocal and another strong chorus. Another favorite is "Broken," a ballad built on clean, reverb-laden guitars. On "Casting Stone," a dynamic, somewhat cosmic nine-minute track, what I take to be the bass at times sounds like it's firing lasers.

The production and mastering are excellent. Nothing on the album crowds anything else out, and the instruments work together in an organic way. The keyboards stay in the background and build the atmosphere, while the guitars and bass carry the proggy parts. The drums never take over. Klemp's vocals are strong throughout, and you can hear every instrument and every backing vocal. This is Pereira's first album with the band, and the bass plays a big role in these songs.

Everyone in TEMIC can play, and they keep the technique inside the songs. The album runs on musicianship and songwriting, and the solos are few. The one in the middle of "Parting the Waves Inside," a dreamy 7:24, is organic and never pushes to the front. After it the song moves into a classic prog-metal keyboard passage. "Night of Veils" opens on piano and calm vocals and plays almost like an interlude. "Alone" follows with seven emotional minutes, more dynamic than the track before it.

The closer, "As Long As We Last," is calm and light for most of its 10:21, with some falsetto, and gathers momentum while keeping that airy feel. Its solo starts at around nine minutes and builds to an explosion. It takes another minute for everything to settle, and then an echoing voice makes the last sound on the album. At over an hour, Ceiba is a long record. It is a concept album, and I like the way it flows from start to finish. For anyone who comes to progressive metal for the songs, this is mandatory listening.

★★★★½ 9/10

TEMIC - Ashes (official music video):

Follow TEMIC

Promo provided by Season of Mist.