Review Summary: A promising start.
The Icarus Complex are eclectic if nothing else. They deliver vintage melodeath riffs, gutturals growls, old school melodic metalcore breakdowns, and proggy syncopated bridges all in the first song. The ambition is there, and is all the more respectable considering
Horizons of Endless Gray is the unsigned outfit’s debut EP. The duo, comprised of Alexis Yiangoullis and Adam Gola, toss so many tricks and techniques into the tight 22 minute runtime that one could wonder what they have left to offer on their follow-up. Regardless of speculation,
Horizons of Endless Gray is The Icarus Complex coming out swinging, and it mostly pays off for them.
The band wear their influences on their sleeves, evident by how many different sounds they channel across the EP. The riff-work especially pays a lot of homage to melodic death metal, but there’s thrash, metal and deathcore, and dashes of folk and prog across the board. You could essentially cherry pick across heavy metal history and find numerous niche styles in evidence on
Horizons of Endless Gray. It’s not the choicest path towards originality, but it serves them well here. Intro “…And I Ascended” evolves beautifully into “Tears of the Syncophant”, and the pair make for an especially effective opening punch. The first half is certainly the strongest by a mile, aggression suiting the band a bit better than the more drawn out compositions in the second half. “Final Paroxysms” wallows quite a bit, nor is it helped by the too-present clean vocals that generally grate across the entire EP. The conventional yet competent growls that adorn most of the record do a far better job of carrying it, compared to the vaguely Bruce Dickinson, vaguely off-key singing.
Despite lacking something in identity (forgivable all considering) and some off putting vocals,
Horizons of Endless Gray is a wholly entertaining slice of melodic metal. The Icarus Complex come out swinging with a lot of promise and a lot of competence that infers better things further down the road.
