Tom Geldschläger, aka Tom Fountainhead, came back on my radar because of his truly wild and unprecedentedly cool contributions to last year’s standout Ontology of Naught from Ingurgitating Oblivion.  Of course, I would have remembered him from his performance as a part of Obscura on Akróasis, but whatever the fuck Obscura is up to these days has kind of wiped my mind of them completely.  Still, the man has been grinding it out as a lead guitarist for hire for a pretty damn long time, but on and as Changeling, Fountainhead finally brings himself to the forefront of his musical endeavors.

In addition to being a world class guitarist, Fountainhead is also a composer, author of music books, and a sought-after public speaker about creativity, audio production and mental health.  All of that is to say nothing of his raw capabilities (yet), but Fountainhead might be best known for his unusual choice of playing both fretted and fretless guitars.  Especially in a metal context, fretless guitars are not often seen, but to have one utilized in the context of a lead instrument is almost unheard of outside of a select group of bluesmen and Guthrie Govan (if you know of any others that you’d recommend to me, get in the comments).  To execute the kind of blistering, technical and dextrous solos that Geldschläger pulls off routinely takes a truly ridiculous amount of talent, but Geldschläger has that in spades.  If you play guitar, you should already know how hard it is to play that cleanly and precisely WITH FRETS, but even without them, his intonation never wavers by a cent, and his bag of tricks seems practically never ending.  On Changeling, his wizardry is firmly front and center, backed by a head-spinning amount of guest talent, which features the likes of Mike Heller on drums, Morean of Alkaloid on vocals, Arran McSporran on fretless bass, Andy LaRoque and Jason Gobel with guest solos, and a myriad other assembly of strings, woodwinds, horns, pianos, folk instruments, and choirs.  Clearly, no expense was spared bringing Changeling together, but it shows in just how bombastic these compositions are.

There is just about nothing else in music that ignites a passion in me more than a good, solid case of fretboard wankery, and for this reason alone Changeling immediately steals my heart.  This is a guitar-forward album through and through, although that shouldn’t come as a surprise.  Fountainhead goes absolutely crazy from minute one to sixty of this record, dazzling with an unparalleled amount of prowess and finesse.  The fretless guitar obviously steals the show, and that goes even beyond the solos Tom performs on it.  The middle section of “Abyss,” for example, is full of sickeningly warbly and just slightly out of tune riffs that make me nauseous in all the best ways.  Truth be told, everyone on this record, especially the main lineup, lays down a killer performance.  McSporran’s fretless bass work is the stuff dreams are made of (nobody needs frets on their instruments, apparently!), and Morean’s vocals are brutal and ferocious.  Take, for example, the lock-step tech metal of the title track, or the lightning quick “Falling in Circles.”  The album closes with the monumental seventeen minute epic “Anathema,” which feels like the composition the whole album revolves around and features some of the tightest and most outrageous playing on the entire album.  The whole record is a joy to listen to because of how electrifying the musicianship is, but one must ask: does Changeling take an awful lot of influence from Obscura?  Maybe so.  Is it “too much”?  I will leave that up to you, but I will concede the similarities are undeniable.  I think that Changeling has enough originality going for it, not to mention that caliber of playing being a huge cut above their competitors, that I would put this debut in a place of its own.

Changeling, for me, hits a lot of the same notes that First Fragment’s most recent release did, or Sanshi by Ripped to Shreds, or even Rising Force.  It’s a statement piece about all the areas still left to explore on the guitar as an instrument and as a creative medium.  I sincerely hope this is only the beginning for Changeling, because I’ve been saying I need more of Tom Fountainhead in my life for a while now.

— Ian

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Changeling is available now on Season of Mist.  For more information on Changeling, visit Tom Geldschläger’s official website.