Thomas Abban – A Sheik's Legacy

Multi-instrumentalist Thomas Abban puts out a pretty phenomenal album with "A Sheik's Legacy". The multiple track layering of sounds (most played by Abban) is very well mixed, begging a disbelief that it is not a band playing. Being that the album has been out for several years now (2017) and even received some press in Rolling Stone, I am astounded that this record has less visibility than it does.

Lyrically, A Sheik's Legacy is nearly flawless. Listening to songs and reading the liner notes, the guy is a poet. Tracks like "Symmetry And Black Tar", "Aladdin", "Lord", and "Let Me Tell You Something" stand out easily as amazing works, with strong composition or great melody to really back the track and raise accessibility to most listeners. Throw a rock and you will hit an amazing song.

I would put it at about 80% great, 10% good, 10% meh

It isn't all rainbows though. Some tracks initially were very interesting, but lose strength on repeat listens. An example of this would be the opening track "Death Song". This isn't to say that the song sucks, The first couple listens it is a great jam that draws you in. However, if you throw on a pair of headphones and really get saturated, you get thrown off by a high falsetto 'whoop' sound which occurs overly frequently and begins to severely detract from the song.. Which is a damn shame because without them, the track would retain high value based on lyrics and musical complexity..

In contrast, the very same 'Whoop' sees a recurrence on track 3 'Fear', carrying the sound in a wholly different and highly beneficial manner following the major transitions in the song.

Highly suggest this album.