Bandcamp Din of Celestial Birds gave their second album a title that doubles as its thesis. Takeoffs & Landings is a concept record about travel and the journey of life, the stresses and the triumphs, and this Leeds instrumental band tell that story entirely through guitar: no vocals to lean on, the lead line taking the role of narrator, the arrangements doing the emotional lifting. Across forty-odd minutes it climbs from glassy clean-toned calm into widescreen post-metal heft and back down again, and when it commits to that arc it is genuinely moving.
The band are strongest when they let the music breathe. The back half is where Takeoffs & Landings really lands: “You Are My Temple” is refreshingly un-brickwalled, its brutal opening giving way to a long, spacious middle with real dynamic headroom, and the closer “Second Star To The Right, and Straight On ‘Til Morning” earns its heavy payoff with a patient, room-sounding build and natural, un-triggered drums. Best of all is “I Hope That Road Leads You Somewhere Beautiful, Somewhere You Belong,” an honest, atmospheric post-rock-to-post-metal swell with a warm live feel and no fake sub-bass, the kind of track that makes the instrumental format feel like a gain rather than a limitation.
Where it slips is a certain over-polish up front. The opening title track and “When Suddenly…” lean into a glossier, sample-tight, loudness-maximized mix that reads a little sterile next to the organic later material, and “When Suddenly…” even brings in aggressive screams that sit buried and add less than the clean dynamics around them. A recurring low-mid thickening in the densest riffs costs a touch of clarity too. None of it derails the record, but the contrast between the breathing tracks and the compressed ones is audible.
Takeoffs & Landings is an emotionally literate, dynamically alive instrumental post-metal record that trusts melody and space to carry a genuine narrative, and when Din of Celestial Birds resist the urge to polish they sound like a band with a real gift for the slow reveal. Anyone who likes their post-metal cinematic and their journeys earned should let this one play front to back. Window seat, headphones, watch the ground fall away.
Standout tracks: I Hope That Road Leads You Somewhere Beautiful Somewhere You Belong, You Are My Temple, Second Star To The Right and Straight On ‘Til Morning
