Review Summary: While being extremely technical and bludgeoning the listener with and endless amount of sweep picked arpeggio's and insane bass lines, Antithesis fails to bring anything truly original to the table and falls into the extremely average category.
The Tech Death genre has really gained some legitimate ground over the last few years, spotlighting certain very technical bands such as Necrophagist, Decapitated and Psycroptic. While Tech Death began with some very familiar Death Metal bands such as Suffocation, its rare that those bands are considered Tech Death these days. As a matter of fact, the current Tech Death scene has turned into to nothing more than a genre that many bands go to just to show how crazy and ridiculous their music can get. The genre has become cluttered, only leaving room for a few bands to be truly original. Origin is one of the bands I expected to be somewhat original and different, especially because of all the good things I had heard about the band. However, Antithesis, Origin's fourth full length album, is definitely nothing original or anything close to separating Origin from the many other generic Tech Death bands who rely on ridiculous instrumentation and blazing speed to gain them fans.
Now, before I truly get into this review, I want everyone to realize that I am a true sucker for ridiculous technicality in Metal. I love it! However, I do not like it when the depth of the music suffers because of the focus on technicality. Bands such as Dream Theater have proven that music can be extremely technical and still have plenty of depth. While they are in a completely different genre, the point I'm trying to make by using them as an example can be applied to any genre, especially Death Metal.
Now that I have gotten that out of the way, let's get into the review. After being pretty excited about buying Antithesis, I popped it in my car and was absolutely bombarded by the first track "The Aftermath". After hearing this track, I was more than ready for the rest of the album. However, after listening to the second song I realized that not much had changed from the first track. My ears were still being bludgeoned by continuous blast beats, ridiculous guitar riffs and some of the craziest bass lines I've ever heard. While all of this is very impressive to hear, it ends up coming off extremely boring after hearing the same thing over and over and over again.
I think the biggest problem I found with this album is that there is never any point that the band let's the listeners take a break from the technical madness. While some Tech Death fans might not really want that out of their Tech Death, I, for one, enjoy a good instrumental break just to build you up for what's about to come next. Sure, you have your occasional guitar solo, but that's about as close as Origin ever comes to giving the listener a break and building them up for the next crazy section of the song. Building the listener up is something many modern Metal bands do. It's become very common and it gives the music depth. However, because of the bands focus on technicality, the sound begins to become quite familiar and overused. Also, because the whole band seems to be trying to out do each other when it comes to their ridiculous technical abilities, it all runs together and makes the music sound cluttered and.....as much as I hate to sound like an old fogie.....just like a bunch of noise.
Another problem I found here is that the vocalist sometimes is drowned out by the instruments. Now, to me, this is something they should have really worked out in the studio. A vocalist should never be drowned out by the instruments. At times he comes in loud and clear, but other times he sounds like he's in another room screaming to the top of his lungs. This is another sign that this band is trying way too hard to be technical and goes back to my claim about the music coming out as nothing more than noise at times.
Now, I know I have bashed the album quite a bit, but there are some things I do like about the album. While I have complained about the technicality and overuse of it, it all still remains quite impressive in the end and there are songs on this album that really get me pumped. Probably the best songs on this album are "The Aftermath", "Wrath of Vishnu" and "Finite". The rest of the album, however, seems to just sound like filler to me, and this is mainly because it all starts sounding the same after about the 2nd or 3rd track.
I really wanted to love this album, but I just could not get into it. In the end, this band just didn't do it for me. However, don't get me wrong, this album is NOT bad. It is just average. There is just nothing here that really sets these guys apart from many of the average Tech Death bands that are cluttering the already congested genre. While I did find the album somewhat interesting and some of the songs quite good, there was never a moment where I though "Man, this crap is amazing!". Instead, the only thought going through my mind was "This is getting really old". At that point, I pressed the stop button.
