REVIEW: Epimetheus - Perseus 9

EPIMETHEUS’ debut album Perseus 9 arrives like a transmission from a dying star; dense, disorienting, and with a strange allure. It’s an album that understands heaviness not as brute force, but as a gravitational pull, where chords are given space to ring and fill a room. Made up of BEN PRICE (vocals, bass), CILLIAN BREATHNACH (guitar), and JAMES JACKSON (drums, vocals), the Bristol trio take us on a journey of sci-fi myth-making across seven tracks that somehow feels both ancient and futuristic.

EPIMETHEUS’ approach to heaviness is refreshing; rather than stack layers or chase maximalism in their sound, they lean into the creative limitations that can come with being a three-piece. Each instrument is in conversation with each other, orbiting one another in slow, deliberate cycles. At times PRICE’S vocals rumble like subterranean currents, and BREATHNACH’S sustained notes at times resemble distress signals, decaying into the void of space. JACKSON’S drumming gives structure to the music, giving the trio a centre of mass to ground their sound.

The decision to record Perseus 9 live proves essential to its character. You can hear the air move. You can hear the amps strain. There’s a palpable sense of the trio thinking together in real time. There’s no safety net, no overdubbed scaffolding beneath solos, and no attempt to sand down the rough edges. Perseus 9 is a perfect example of a band trusting their chemistry, and trusting the listener to come on the journey with them. It’s a rare example of a live-tracked heavy record that actually sounds heavier because of its imperfections.

In their music, EPIMETHEUS channels sci-fi as emotional architecture. Lyrically, the album is steeped in 1970’s sci-fi pulp - and it is no surprise to hear that Philip K. Dick was a key influence on the trio. While an easy genre to fall into kitsch traps or cheapen otherwise solid work, EPIMETHEUS clearly understands how to use this framework as a prism rather than a costume. It is treated not as a novelty, but as a tool to refract the human experience by distorting it. The imagery may be cosmic, but the emotions are very painfully terrestrial. Across the record, spacecraft crash, bodies transcend, and cosmic horrors loom, but the real drama is internal.

Earthbound opens the album and wastes no time plunging the listener into the band’s world. With the stark first line “warning - system fail,” the track immediately establishes a sense of crisis, unfolding from the point of view of an alien vessel crash-landing on Earth. With lyrics that read like a scene ripped straight from a sci-fi novella, and a track that builds in urgency and inevitability, the track is a gripping introduction to the album anchored by a hooky riff that lodges itself in the brain.

The titular track, Perseus 9, is an eight minute descent into claustrophobic repetition. Musically, the band sonically traps us in the very same nightmarishly looping “concentric circles” as those aboard the ship. The riffs repeat and cycle without resolving themselves, building a sense of entrapment, of needing a conclusion. The chords don’t just hit, they linger, not resolving so much as decaying, droning and creating a creeping sense of dread. Some listeners may find the track’s length demanding, but with discomfort a key motif of the song, that demand feels intentional.

Perseus 9 is a striking debut that is focused, atmospheric, and refuses to compromise. It is melodic, but not polished. Conceptual, but not pretentious. Raw without feeling unfinished. There is space to evolve and offer more sonic texture, however this is a solid first album. If this is EPIMETHEUS’ first transmission, they have certainly left an impression and we look forward to whatever signal they send out next.

Score: 7/10

Perseus 9 will be released on 6th February 2026.

Words: Cara Hyndman

Photos: Connor Standfield