Review Summary: 2018: The year of the middling death metal album.
Those that follow the rise and fall of death metal with any sense of regularity know that trends come and go. Like a tidal surge the waves of quality retreat upon themselves taking a mass smaller than itself at the very peak. And just like these trends, the level of quality regress into smaller deviations with only a cluster of releases holding firm to the original. With this, there’s always the chance that some will explore new ground taking more than what’s on offer. Unfortunately, there’s an equal measure of those who stray too far, never fully returning to that sacred middle ground where everything clicks.
Amidst an ever increasing onslaught of death metal releases circa 2018 there’s Letters From The Colony. Yet another Swedish act vying for their share of a fan base, taking one extreme to the next. If anything is certain here, it’s that
Vignette has its moments. Fairly, having only a couple of EPs should leave expectation seemingly wide open but with sound references from Meshuggah, Opeth to Gojira and touches of Fallujah, the tendency to set the bar high has to come naturally (why else would you name drop bands at this level﹖) As it stands, Letters From The Colony has released another album worthy of the conversation but it’s equal parts grandeur and filler, favouring the tides gone too far to return to their original place.
Vignette fails to be tied to simple genre classification. From the melodic nuances that wouldn’t be out of place on any Tesseract album teetering to the low end of Meshuggah like riffage to the primal and technically ferocious edge ala Obscura. Letters To The Colony bring a host of soundscapes to their debut, offering a busy listen. Album opener, “Galax” lends itself to spacey atmospherics, before launching into a frontal assault on the senses. The eight-plus minute track hints at everything the new album has to offer - the good and the bad. The progressive pacing that comes with polyrhythmic timings and cliched atmospherics is often leveled out by an actual talent in songwriting. If only it lasted the album’s fifty-six minute run time.
Vignette is aided by a slick production, but that’s not without its own set of flaws. In order to provide a clear tone for the band’s more melodic approach to death metal the music loses its clear demanding punch. The Meshuggah-esque riffing that permeates throughout
Vignette’s length lacks the stop/start intensity that would naturally come from using so much low end, particularly “The Final Warning” and “Cataclysm”. That’s not to say the studio fine tuning has done a bad job here, rather it could simply be so much better if those involved were a lot more focused.
With all that out of the way the album’s highlights are easily identifiable. The chaos found within “Cataclysm” is controlled and fervent, tapping into that djent laden, Meshuggah polyrhythm that combines tightly with the album’s million dollar production (minus the issues mentioned above). As far as progressive death metal goes it could be said that imitation is just another form of flattery and Meshuggah is at the forefront of Letters From The Colony mind. Tracks like “This Creature Will Haunt Us Forever” offer some reprieve from the album’s ‘heavier’ moments but each track has a tendency to regress into bleak moments of ethereal cleans, clearing the air and letting go of the aggressive neutrality the group will be known for. And while “Glass Palaces” may stick to a formulaic structure of aggressive death metal and progressive cleans, there is something to be said about stepping out and trying your own thing once in a while.
The whole picture when examined thoroughly enough explains just why an album like this could fall into the overrated category with the rest of the genre’s modern contemporaries. A flamboyant display of musicianship, some solid songwriting and some technically strong vocal prowess do tick all the right boxes but it’s the need to flesh every track out to the most unwelcome of lengths, noodling and crunching as the band go about their business. Yeah, this is a solid debut - but there’s just way too much filler to turn away from. Overall if you’re a fan of the modern progressive trends coming out of the djent heavy, technical sides of death metal this should be enough to get you going. Consider the waves, will you stand knee deep as the tide leaves﹖ Or would you rather dive in and never be seen again, swept away﹖
