Review Summary: Headbangable, enjoyable, even if it isn't the reinventing of the breakdown.
I have long argued against musical critics who feel the need to constrict beyond all reasonable need the term "progressive". Simply writing head-bending, acid-tripping, hour-spanning pieces of music might place a musical act into the "progressive", but the idea that only groups that produce 20-minute time-killers that only musicians can understand can be "progressive" is simply preposterous.
The Advaita Concept might utilize familiar frameworks and motifs within their debut offering, but any listener of music - short of the extremely abstract - is going to be hard-pressed to find any musical act within any genre that doesn't utilize the "influence" of another to form their own sound.
A listener seeking more conventional metalcore might be more inclined to look into anything by Killswitch Engage, Unearth, or All That Remains. With those artists, you'll find the familiar album-selling structures of introductions, verses, choruses (less so with Unearth) and the almighty breakdown.
A listener will find these things with The Advaita Concept too, however to judge the music only on the basic building blocks of a song is to miss the soundscapes being constructed within them. Songs like Ontology and The Space Between Spaces delve into mosh-friendly chug patterns without any remorse, but the textures weaved in between these songs fabrics are what set them apart from your more standard metalcore fare. The Floridians' use of spacey and ethereal atmospheres and guitar parts, while not a new notch on the belt that is heavy metal (certainly not of the recent "Djent" trend), it is these small nuances that add a flair of sophistication and depth to the songs. They are subtle flavorings, when taken with the thought-provoking lyrical content, do create a sense of "otherworldliness"
The off-timey chugs found in their songs may pay a slight homage to denser musical titans Meshuggah, but if they simply wanted to rip off insane 23/16 polyrhythms, they could have. They didn't, instead opting for some progressive dashes of off-beat moments, unusual key changes, and less-than-standard song structures.
Whether it's the made-for-radio (ish) "The World Away", the dissonant and ugly "Something Massive" or even the very tongue-in-cheek "Testicular Tetris", when you boil down The Ratio to its core, most listeners are going to find a solid modern metal, tinged with both progressive and pop nuances, that may not create a new sub-sub-sub genre of metal, but will find many fans who are willing to give them a chance instead of just passing judgment on them.
