Pelican have always been reliably great, an instrumental quartet that owes equal parts to post-metal and indie rock. Last year’s Forever Becoming was the first album without band founder Laurent Schroeder-Lebec, but they’ve carried on just fine without him. One of the highlights of that album was a song called “The Cliff,” and on February 24th, the band will be releasing an EP with the same title. The four-track EP will feature three different versions of the track, and a new song. Today Metal Sucks premiered one of the versions, and it actually features vocals! Allen Epley of The Life and Times and Shiner lent his vocals to the song, and it’s as stirring as the original version. If his voice sounds familiar to Pelican fans, it’s because he’s reprising a role that he firset filled on their 2009 album What We All Come to Need, singing for the first time ever on a Pelican song on “Final Breath.”
The other versions of “The Cliff” will be by Justin Broadrick of Godflesh and Jesu and by Aaron Harris and Bryant Cliford of Isis and Palms. And yes, we mean Isis the defunct post-metal band, not the terrorist group. The EP will be out on Southern Lord on February 24th.
