Review Summary: shweet metal brahs
The Afterimage is a relatively new band in the in the metalcore scene, and they show a ton of potential with their first EP entitled Formless. Formless is made up of 4 songs that lasts about 12:30 minutes, with one of them being an intro. The Afterimage stays very technical while being melodic, and pair this with awesome vocals, interesting lyrics and great production and you have a great opening EP for any band. I guess they fall into the category of "spacey djent", so they are not really creating anything new, but what they are doing is playing technical music thats fun to listen to.
The first song, "Prologue", is a great opener, and builds into the EP very nicely. The next two songs are both really interesting, however, they may become boring after a couple listens. Its not that they are bad, its just that some parts tend to drag on a little bit, and some of the effects make the music sound overproduced. They have no cleans, but the couple of times that they use speaking vocals do sound overused, but it is a nice change of pace. They use the standard mix of melodic guitars with fast chugging that many bands of the same genre use, but The Afterimage use them to their advantage by creating atmosphere and adding layers throughout the songs. They mess with time signatures and also have a lot of short harsh guitar tapping sections that may get annoying, but it adds to the complexity of the guitar work. Ive been able to listen to this EP multiple times and discover small new things with each listen. The last song on the EP, "The Void", is what makes this EP a 4. It combines everything I dig from the EP into one song, and sounds great, (It also has a pretty dope breakdown). I do wish they would change up the tempo of the songs a little more. I would like to see some shorter instrumental interludes within the songs, but what I've seen from their newest singles they are doing just that.
In all, this short EP sounds great, but may not be what everyone is interested in. The amount of effects and chugs may turn people off of the EP, but they are growing in popularity and the reason is that they are fun and create technical music. I'm always down to jam that.
