So here’s what this is—a double album, coming to about an hour in length, that collates a frankly astonishing amount of stylistic breadth from Warped Tour’s golden years, with its own slew of callbacks and motifs and a ten-minute closer to wrap it up. And Capstan are in the metalcore bracket primarily defined by its laziness, are they? Okay then…
The truth is Capstan have long deserved more credit than that, certainly over many who’ll otherwise get it. There’s a fresher feel to them, and on 2021’s SEPARATE, that translated into a good little album that still wore its sonic allegiance plainly. ‘Redefining’ isn’t really in their wheelhouse as much as ‘refocusing’, where paying dues to eras of commercial emo and post-hardcore before them can do a lot of work for them. On paper, then, The Mosaic isn’t that much of a leap of logic. It is a leap, definitely; Capstan have forgone most natural growth in favour of ballooning into this all-encompassing scene-machine. If anyone in post-hardcore, metalcore, pop-punk, pop-rock and the incestuous planetoids of genre floating between them all has seen relevance in the past decade or so, chances are there’s at least a slug of them to be found here.
To be fair, you don’t go into an album called The Mosaic without at least the tacit expectation of something fragmented and piecemeal. There’s enough thrown in to where that would never not be the case, brought to bear by how specific some of the touchstones can be. Ice Nine Kills’ style and angle of songwriting is all over Bête Noire; meanwhile, Bloom and Dwell are both just different flavours of Mayday Parade ballad. Even outside of named examples, saxophoned synthwave like What You Want and a country-pop clap-along in What Can I Say aren’t alien concepts for the scene at all. Regardless of which box of 2010s nostalgia Capstan rifle through, they’ll always seem to happen upon something to plug into their haphazard collection of sounds and movements.
And yeah, it is kinda, sorta, a gigantic overreach on their part. That can’t be a controversial view, can it? The fact that, for all their efforts to obliterate boundaries, it can be hard to see what the main focus of Capstan is? Just take the aforementioned What Can I Say, for example, and how directly before its winsome jaunt is Moloch, the heaviest song on the album. To that end, The Mosaic is informed by its disconnect, where chunks of material display little to no cohesion with what’s around them, and thus feel rather bricked in place. If the idea behind that title was for wide-angle image of everything that Capstan want to stand for an represent, that’s not really what you get. It’s mainly just blocks arranged into something vaguely resembling something else.
The element of wherewithal to even attempt this isn’t lost with that, mind. It’s pretty ridiculous to assume it could pay off wholly—exacerbated multiple times over when Capstan aren’t a household name with the capital to get away with it—but there’s also a bravery and imagination in there that’s worth platforming. It’s what SEPARATE did well a couple of years ago, cranked to the nth degree to where it’s legitimately unmissable. And there are moments of fun and good execution that make this worthwhile, outside of the head-spinning notion of it all. Capstan are on the more technically savvy end of their scene, almost at times reading like a version of Dance Gavin Dance that’s isn’t completely unlistenable. Plus, there’s a key gift for melody on Hailey and What You Want; even if they’re poles apart sonically, they aren’t without one common thread.
That’s probably the biggest concession granted to The Mosaic—it’s far from the sum of its parts, but some of those parts are quite alright. Anyway, it’s way preferable for this to exist than the next of umpteen metalcore meh-fests. At least with something like this, Capstan can stake a name for themselves and have presence while doing it; you’re not gonna get this confused with many others! So while The Mosaic is far from stellar, it feels as though it still does what it needs to. As a way to further Capstan’s reputation and give them some attention via curiosity, if nothing else, maybe you could call this a success? It’s also just as likely to be a misshapen, gimmicky globster of an album in record time, but hey, let’s stick to the positives for now.
For fans of: Ice Nine Kills, Dance Gavin Dance, Pierce The Veil
‘The Mosaic’ by Capstan is released on 24th May on Fearless Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
This is what I thought the first couple of listens through. But after a while it’s become one of my favourite albums ever. I love it, it’s been at or near the top of my most listened list since it came out.