Review Summary: A circle pit-inducing thrash album. A debut album to be proud of.
This album was a pleasurable listen with great replay value, and some very, very interesting songs.
The track listing of 12 songs never lets up, bringing thrash metal and metal core together in a brilliant way.
On their debut record, Sylosis have proven their proficiency of instruments and songwriting abilities, with some excellent playing and vocals.
Kicking off the album, 'Desolate Seas' acts as an atmospheric intro to 'After Lifeless Years', while sharing a chord progression from one of the latter song's parts. This sets the tone for the entire disc, atmospheric, melodic, fast, heavy. Songs such as 'Teras' display Josh Middleton and Alex Bailey's technical style of guitar playing. Sweep picking is often used as a gimmick to fill a space in a song for no real reason other than to try and sound flashy; in 'Teras', sweep picking is used to highlight strange and evil sounding chord changes, giving a sense of panic and an impending cataclysm.The precise, circle pit inducing riffs which lay the foundations of this disc are also a double edged sword.
One of the downsides of the disc is the feeling of familiarity with each riff, certain songs start to sound very similar, as if the riff had been blatantly recycled from another song.
Songs such as 'The blackest skyline' and 'Conclusion of an Age' showcase masterful structuring however, while not lengthening the songs to a time which would disrupt the flow of the album. Having said that, the longest song on this album, 'Swallow the world', is 7:44 long, and while not disrupting the flow of the album, is the weakest pick from the disc. The LP features mostly mid or high range screams rather than clean vocals, and for good reason: there's no feeling as if the clean vocals have been forced in to please a mainstream audience, but rather placed when needed. This pays off massively, changing the dynamics dramatically when the clean singing appears in a track. The lyricism is excellent on this album, with the lyrics on 'Oath of silence' particularly ingraining their way into the listeners brain with a rageful theme and a powerful delivery.
All in all, this is a debut record to be proud of, and a bar for Sylosis to attempt to raise. It's a very high bar, with few complaints to its name, a very cohesive, blood-pumping listen, which oozes personality without sacrificing heaviness. The replay value is tremendous, and it's very easy to listen to all of it in one sitting. An essential purchase for a metalhead's CD collection.
