I know I keep saying this to start my reviews, but I’ll say it about this album, too: this is my first time listening to an album by this act.

Porcupine Tree are a band I don’t even know if I’d heard of before I saw that this album was going to be released. But anyway, I decided to check out their new album, Closure/Continuation … and while I respect this album a lot, and it sounds like an album that had a lot of effort put into it, it didn’t really click for me personally outside of two songs.

I’ll start by talking about the songs on this album that I do like. “Dignity” has some really good melodies, and I think it’s produced well for the most part. This song reminds me of “Space Oddity” by David Bowie, and while I don’t love it nearly as much as I love “Space Oddity”, I still like this song.

Lead singer, Steven Wilson, said that “Herd Culling” is about UFO-related things lyrically, as something shows up outside somebody’s house. I love the powerful chorus on this song, and the song is really well produced in my opinion.

Then there’s “Walk The Plank”, which has instrumentation which feels all over the place, and it doesn’t sound very good together if you ask me.

The album opens with my least favourite track here, “Harridan”. This song is over eight minutes long, and there’s pretty much nothing about it that really clicks for me. Also, the vocals are mixed terribly in my opinion.

“Of The New Day” has some cool ideas … I like the guitar progression around the halfway point, but the song as a whole feels like it’s missing something, and as a result, it feels pretty boring to me.

And then there’s “Rats Return” which also feels like it just drags on without having much that really interests me. Also, I really don’t like the vocal effect used on Steven Wilson’s vocals here.

I really don’t like the closing track, “Chimera’s Wreck” … this song is almost ten minutes long, and something about the eerie feeling to it really makes me want to turn it off, and I’m not totally sure why. There’s just something about this song that really bugs me, and I’m not trying to say that it’s ‘badly written’ or anything like that, just that personally, I find some of it to be really annoying, even though I do like some moments of it, such as the high-pitched vocals that come in about six minutes and forty seconds in. Also, the lyrics might be very personal, and I’m not trying to be disrespectful, I’m just saying that it doesn’t click for me.

Overall, while there are elements of this album that I like, and I like “Dignity” and “Herd Culling”, the majority of this album really didn’t click for me. As a whole album that’s almost fifty minutes long, I’m giving this a 3.5/10. But that’s just how I feel about it. Feel free to let me know in the comments what you thought of this album and/or what you thought of my review.

Sorry if this review comes across a bit rushed … I’m working on a post where I’m doing ten mini album reviews. I hope to get that post done within the next week or so, but realistically, I have no idea how long it’ll take. 

And with that, thanks for reading!

Final Thoughts
Rating: 3.5/10
Favourite Tracks: “Dignity”, “Herd Culling”
Least Favourite Tracks: “Harridan”, “Walk The Plank”, “Chimera’s Wreck”