Review Summary: Squandered potential.
I’d call Inanimate Existence’s latest “opus”
Calling From A Dream a fall from grace if their previous output was more impressive. That’s not meant as a slight necessarily, much as it may sound like one. The Bay Area outfit has had a respectable, short career thus far. Their debut
Liberation Through Hearing was solid, if overlong, and certainly
A Never-Ending Cycle of Atonement impressed as a nearly relentless slab of technical death metal, while subtly revealing more ambitious ideas than just raw aggression. Neither of these releases truly wowed however, and the word that comes to mind here is “baffling”.
Calling From A Dream is a sharp turn after
A Never-Ending Cycle of Atonement, full of change and ambition that should feel refreshing. Yet that ambition results only in a dilution of everything that worked on its predecessor, mixed with new ideas that are only new in the regard that Inanimate Existence wasn’t doing them already.
Even the first moments of the title track, and opener, feel off. There’s some passable ambience to build an atmosphere, the mainstay of progressive music in the 2010s as much as technicality is, followed by female crooning that feels somehow misplaced in the mix. When the instruments come in, the most noticeable bit is an exceptional recreation of Fallujah’s trademark melodic vibrato. Throw in some absurdly fruity prog transitions, a touch of halfhearted Cynic worship here and there, downtuned chuggery to placehold every actual riff, and an absurd overuse of said female crooning and you have
Calling From A Dream in a nutshell. There’s variation here to be fair. Well, somewhere. The few interesting moments mostly crop up buried in slabs of grey, lazy writing that prevents anyone from properly retaining it. It’s obvious they had a lot of ideas for this release, which is respectable, but most of them are lifted from other artists or presented as shadows of their former selves. An abysmally thin and soft production job is like the rotten cherry on top of a package that seems to be falling apart before you have a chance to open it. And it’s all a shame really. Inanimate Existence hadn’t reached any truly lofty position in modern death metal yet, but that’s kind of what hurts most about this. Because they had potential, but squandered it plain and simple.
