Review Summary: A decently well-executed record that is powerless in its heavy sections and cold in its moments of emotion.
Djent (a term despised by many, but I'll be using it throughout the review for lack of any better genre descriptor) is a genre marked by its inherently inorganic, cold, and sterile qualities. The extended-range guitars djent along in 4/4-challenged rhythms, the drums make liberal use of mind-boggling double bass patterns, and the oft-monotone vocals scream along with all the emotion of a really pissed-off robot. Genre forefathers Meshuggah, album after album, pull off this formula remarkably well, making music easily fit for a massive pissed-off demonic robot apocalypse.
Textures are one of the more well-known bands in a growing pool of
Meshuggah-influenced djent acts, and they do, if not anything else, deserve their spot in the upper pantheons of
Meshuggah-worshipers. Their riffs, just like the best of the genre, are consistently both catchy and mindbending. Their drummer, while not coming remotely close to the brilliance of the much-revered Tomas Haake, manages to hold his own against the rest of the pack and handles his polyrhythms with admirable ease.
Textures even has the background synths and effects that many bands often utilize, and they use them to good effect throughout the album's 48-minute runtime.
Strangely, the album fails where it tries to differentiate itself from the rest of the pack.
Textures, by means of making liberal use of lead vocalist Eric Kalsbeek's impressive cleans and scattering numerous softer sections throughout the album, attempt to put warmth and emotion into cold and sterile music. This in and of itself is not a bad thing: other bands with similar ideas have pulled them off quite well. However, minus a few shining exceptions (
Awake), the emotion in
Textures seems somewhat cold and forced, and inversely, the churning sea of djent riffs than carries on throughout most of the album is, to put it quite frankly, not angry enough. The riffs of the album's heavier sections (which make up its vast majority), while all being undoubtedly technically proficient, are all too samey to have any particular lines that really stand out from the rest. It's exactly the same with the soft sections: while the first couple might serve as refreshing and satisfying breaks from the album's mostly unrelenting character, one choral harsh-soft vocal interplay begins to sound very similar to the one before it after a point.
While some of the album's clean-central sections are undeniably beautiful (once again, see
Awake), the vast majority of these attempts fall far short of what
Textures were probably trying to achieve.
Awake features Kalsbeek belting out some genuinely impressive lines, and the man could teach a lot of other singers a thing or two about vocals. He also has some enjoyable parts on
Storm Warning and
Messengers, demonstrating that it's not any lack of ability on his part that drags down
Textures' music: it's the inability of the band as a whole to utilize his talents correctly and their clumsy and forced efforts at interspersing his cleans into the music's heavier parts.
As stated before, the band also fails to be adequately pissed when pissed is called for. This could be due to a number of factors. While Kalsbeek's cleans are outstanding, his harsh vocals are, unfortunately, not nearly so impressive. There is a fine line between the cold sterility that is required of djent and a feeling of being completely forced and powerless, and the man is toying with it. The harsh vocals lack any real power or anger: both of which are required to make music such as this really work. There is a similar problem with the work of the instrumentalists.
Textures try to balance a sense of melody with
Meshuggah-esque chaos, and they often do not succeed. The riffs, simply put, lack the mind-numbing intensity and the head-spinning complexity of those of the genre's forefathers' while also failing to capture the strange catchiness of said genre-titan's riffs.
Basically,
Textures have all of their concepts down to a fault. The music presented on
Silhouettes is undeniably well-executed work by a group of talented musicians, but it is simply too safe. When trying to be introspective
Textures (for the most part) come off as cold, and when trying to be heavy they fail to inject proper amounts of negativity into their assault. True, every now and then a truly angry and effectively-used riff pops up (
Sun's Architect), and the band occasionally displays a sense of melodic brilliance (
Awake), but these moments are too few and far between to make
Silhouettes into anything more than merely passable.
Textures simply need to figure out how to craft the myriad of excellent ideas showcased here into the truly outstanding metal that they are certainly capable of, but until then, they will be stuck as yet another frustratingly subpar
Meshuggah clone.
Album Highlights
Sun's Architect
Awake
Storm Warning
