Let’s have another apocalyptic thrashy death metal album, I guess? This is a nice, but not always great collection of melodic death metal tracks, with some nice energy and anger, some melodies, and some good ideas.
This album can easily blend aggression with melody. The riffs often create catchy melodies on various tracks such as The River and Colossal Collapse, and on the last song, Paradise Dystopia, they experiment with many strange tunes, to create something very peculiar that doesn’t really fit within any subgenre. In addition to melody and catchiness, this album has an energy that never fades away. This is particularly true for On Toxic Wings, which has the fastest riffs on the album, and on the title track, which makes a great self-titled anthem for the band.
And yet, there is definitely some aggression here. With the screaming vocals introducing The River, the beastly growls and snarly screams all over the album, the overall angry tone and the melodic but very heavy riff, there’s plenty of heaviness to be found. The themes of the album add to that heaviness, with all these songs about death, societal collapse and dystopias. That’s why I described it as apocalyptical: the unrelenting heaviness and speed make it feel like the apocalypse is already taking place.
Unfortunately, this album is a little uneven. It kind of suffers from a pretty good beginning and a duller middle. After the title track, the songs start to blend together a little, like the band has already done all the best they could with their formula, and now it becomes less interesting. Luckily, tracks like I’m Not Your Messiah, On Toxic Wings and of course Paradise Dystopia prove that the band still has some good ideas, like the thrash of Toxic Wings, the almost groove metal sound of Messiah and the more experimental Dystopia. And overall, the energy of that album keeps it from becoming completely dull and boring.
It’s, as I have often said, a pretty good album but not a great one. I also felt like I was using descriptions for this album that I have overused in my other reviews. This is why I enjoyed that album, but didn’t love it, and I think that it has some good things to offer but it’s not all that impressive. Still, there’s a lot of worse things you could be listening to, so maybe give this one a try.
Release date: September 16th, 2020
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