It opens with 'An Armada Approaches,' a curious and ominous track composed of two slow building, dread inducing sections. The cynic in me wonders if he wrote two openings and couldn't decide which one he liked better, as both parts serve the same purpose, but in the end they go together quite well.
From there on out, it's an interesting mash of sounds and styles, unified by the constant presence and intrusion of cinematic, nostalgic strings, and skittering drum loops.
There's the airy and pleasant, samba-esque 'Order of the Golden Dawn', the reverb-laden and unsettlingly romantic 'Stampede Me,' the enveloping, and comparitevly conventional 'The Open Hand Avows'.
What's curious is, for how disjointed many of these songs are from each other, and sometimes, from themselves, the album still manages to maintain some sort of overarching continuity.
Partly, this is due to a handful of tracks that bracket the album and the more adventurous songs. Though sonically interesting, they do little but help us transition between the varying styles and provide a sort of anchor, which brings us to 'the problem' with 'Righteous Fists of Harmony'- it's less of an album and more of a 26-minute composition.
It absolutely demands to be listened to in it's entirety. With the exception of 'Order of the Golden Dawn' and perhaps one or two others, it's hard to imagine listening to many of these songs on their own. Which isn't to say that they're bad, but without the framework and context of the album as a whole, they're just not necessarily terribly interesting.
Ultimately, 'Righteous Fists of Harmony' will probably go down as a solid and thoroughly creative addition to Daedulus' discography, but not an essential release. It's good, but it's more of an engaging novelty then an album on its own.