Review Summary: A breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnant genre of brees and breakdowns.
For starters if you've never heard of Veil Of Maya they are a Technical Melodic Deathcore band from Chicago, they have had one other album All Things Set Aside, released in 2006 on Corrosive Recordings.For fans of their previous album the first thing you will notice is the change in vocalists.After the departure of the previous vocalist Adam, he was replaced by ex Mirror,Mirror vocalist Brandon.One other thing you may notice if you were a fan of their previous album is the production,while their guitarist did a good job of recording their debut on his own, it had that "self produced" sound to it. Luckily this album was produced by none other than Michael Keene of The Faceless fame, the same guy who did Born Of Osiris's cd.
This cd features 10 songs however 3 are re-recorded "Sever The Voices" and "Entry Level Exit Wounds" are from their first cd and "It's Torn Away" is a re-recording of a song from their first demo called "Aim For The Head."Also "Wounds" and "Pillars" are both brief instrumentals.So we are left with 5 new songs, while they are quite good songs they are at times quite daunting you can very easily get lost in the technical aspect of this album.This is defintely not an album you can fully appreciate on first listen, it takes a few listens to process everything.Another aspect I didn't like about this album was the same problem I had with Born Of Osiris's cd and that is it's length.Luckly the music is good enough to overlook these small complaints.
On to the music well first off the drums are extremely technical and give off a Meshuggahish vibe this is most apparent in the instrumentals "Wounds" and "Pillars", the guitars are very fast, technical, and at times very melodic ala Misery Signals it's definitely very orignal, these guys arent some The Black Dahlia Murder ripoff thats for sure.Some of the best examples of their guitarists skills is in two of their more melodic songs "It's Not Safe To Swim Today" and "We Bow In Its Aura."
On to the Bass...well whats to say this IS a deathcore record and is for the most part inaudible.On to the vocals, as previously stated this is NOT the same guy as before. If your expecting a clone of their last guy your sadly mistaking.If you've heard Brandon before in Mirror,Mirror than you know what to expect here.He mostly uses growls and occasionally switches to high pitched screams but not so much as Adam. He knows when to balance the two to keep from being monotonous.One thing I like about Brandon is he is always easy to understand, no matter whether he's screaming or growling it's understandable.
On to the breakdowns...All the breakdowns on here are well written and are defintitely not your standard chug-chug breakdowns.Some of the best ones are on "Mark The Lines","All Eyes Look Ahead", and album closer "It's Torn Away."
The lyrics are well written and deal with what else...The Common Mans Collapse, some key lines i find very memorable are "If these are the wounds we suffer than we are the lucky ones" from Crawl back and "If we can't even trust ourselves how can we trust anyone else?" from "It's Not Safe To Swim Today."
So in conclusion despite it's short run time and some times overly technical playing this is a great effort in the deathcore genre. if you like your metal technical,melodic, and full of breakdowns than this cd is for you.
