Last year, I reviewed Lore, a solo album from Michał Wojtas and you can view this by clicking on the button just above. It was a very impressive album.

Now, Wojtas returns to his day job, with Amarok releasing their seventh studio album, Hope, and I think it cannot be stressed enough just how important Poland, and the wider Eastern European communities are to modern progressive rock in both the commercial and cultural sense.

Released through Oskar Records in April, this album has rightly been highly regarded by critics on its release. From the moment you view that cover by Kacper Kwiatkowski to the closing notes of Dolina, this is a sumptuous art rock treat from Michał Wojtas, Marta Wojtas, Konrad Zieliński and Kornel Popławski. They are, incidentally, appearing at the final Night of the Prog festival in July, and I wish I could be there to see them.

We have ten tracks here on a double album in old money just shy of an hour long. In early 2024, despair, fear, death, and threats to the very survival of the species are all around us. Can Hope offer us a path away from doom?

Hope Is starts us off, lyrically fascinating as a launchpad into the unknown with hope for a better future used to shake us out of our present complacency, the despairing rut we find ourselves in. Let’s look at the official video for this below, the image on which is gorgeous. The band are tight, Marta’s voice is suitably enigmatic, almost intoning a prayer to the god of hope. The riffs chug along nicely underneath with a steady rhythm section holding things together before the leap into the unknown itself marks an interesting mix of the post-apocalyptic in its noises and voice, the drum work especially sharp before we get a fine guitar solo, the wailing in the notes yearning. The close is full of anticipation as the countdown to battle begins.

This is followed by Stay Human, which urges a retention of our core being against a constant backdrop of algorithms and so-called “artificial intelligence”, both of which have their benefits, but all too often are used as instruments of fear, loathing, mental slavery, and somehow changing our basic humanity into something akin to chattel slavery not seen for well over a century. The voices work so well together in this extremely thoughtful piece of music which is best described I think as a rather dreamy loop of modern psychedelia which grows ever more intense as it progresses and morphs into an electronica passage, with some of the effects creating a sense of fear against the machines before the rock core of this act comes roaring back with a sense of purpose.

Insomnia is something I thankfully suffer from rarely, but there are those dark nights when sleep refuses to overcome you and anxiety rules, the fear of falling into the void overtaking your non-emotional self. The opening guitar solo and accompanying keys are Floydian, embellished with some nice orchestration. When the vocals tell the story of the sleepless man and night, the repetitive notes and noises put across the emotions very well with a very good acoustic guitar stripping away drama and bringing that sense of loneliness to the fore. The final vocals where the fear comes right to the surface are dripping with feeling with another haunting guitar solo before the impact explodes. This is a very good musical dramatization of a horrible condition.

Trail follows this, a track I take as seeking a firm way in life, but on one’s own terms. Fans of class electronica will love the synths beating a distinct path with some very clever percussion and skin work. This is quite an upbeat, sunny track, and Wojtas again brings us a class guitar solo, the band underneath this producing some funky grooves before the whole mood is transformed as we move into the final segment, with the riffs and crashing drums bringing dark and heavy vibes to the party. I have embedded the track below. Very clever and very good.

Welcome is up next. The opening programming gives an aboriginal feel before the synths suitably darkly introduce the vocals (from Popławski) welcoming us to “the mighty nation, seeking a vision of your life”, but I don’t think this is a particularly nice place, the impression given here is of an Orwellian type dystopia in which individuality is wiped out, and the music does nothing to dispel that at all, the noises, screaming guitars, and minor notes screaming out to us “avoid!”. Stunning, really, a post-rock powerhouse of a track.

Queen is another track I take as being a clarion cry for the sense of self amidst the constant calls from our devices, machines, and bosses to increase corporate productivity, this queen being as cold as steel. It is bleak, dark as an ant’s backside, with black riffs, thudding single drum notes, and vocals creating a sense of a world full of fear. It is embedded below, and it is perhaps not the type of track that you would place on the deck whilst wooing a potential new love who has previously expressed an admiration for Taylor Swift. No, scrub that! Get him/her inducted into the world of intelligent music, especially awash with a horror-filled Romany violin. Stunning.

Perfect Run is an instrumental track, quite long at just shy of six minutes. I close my eyes with this and see a solitary human running for his life from the chasing mechanoids, the crowd vying for either victory or the inevitable dark outcome failure will bring, and it veers between the participants in the manner of the finest sporting occasions with outcomes unknown until the final whistle is blown. It is a very fast paced piece of music, perfectly performed by the collective, the programming especially vivid. The final minute picks up the frantic finish wonderfully, with the guitar especially expressing the thrill of the final chase. You know what? I think we won!

Don’t Surrender follows and opens the door between our fragile minds and the power of nature, which we should remember is the most powerful of all the divine inventions, this expressed in the form of water which cares for all living beings, but also has the power to destroy whole communities with its force. This with the call to “don’t surrender” is a metaphor for the conflict, which is raging across Eastern Europe now, the hope being that the oppressed use the power to overcome the dark forces seeking to destroy them, becoming the water of force to retain life and freedom. It is a wonderfully thoughtful piece of music, the music carrying with it that anthemic hope, and it is embedded below.

Simple Pleasures is the penultimate piece here and is a cry to us all to stay strong, stay free, and stand together against the dark forces massing. It is the longest track on the album at seven and a half minutes, and, going back to my earlier comments, is an upbeat lyrical conclusion as to whether hope can bring us together and find a way to win. I think the vocals on this are powerful in their fragile strength, the harmonies especially pleasing, some of the guitar bursts are stunning, and taken as a whole, the band present to us a picture of a world within our reach, the programming here dramatic but ultimately reaching up, not down, this exemplified in a guitar solo full of emotion at the close.

The album closer is Dolina, and the lyrics in this are Polish and reference wild glades, valley, and a forest in what I take to be a love song with the resurgence of nature after the battle which preceded it. This is a lovely pastoral way to finish the album, eastern European folk music to infuse the soul.

In 2024, I have remarked on more than one occasion that an album is essential. To that can be added Hope. This is a deeply evocative work performed by a band at the top of their musical game, an album which does genuinely give you hope that we can and will overcome the forces which surround us. You can get the digital album at https://amarokmusic.bandcamp.com/album/hope whilst those of you preferring the physical product, pop along to Oskar Records at https://oskarrecords.bandcamp.com/album/hope-cd-2lps