Review Summary: Good mainstream metal within a disappointing album.
Progressions is in the same vein as Five Finger Death Punch, Demon Hunter, and Bury Your Dead. Imonolith are overdosing on testosterone and they want you to feel it. They live in the land of heavy, a prosperous land with a plethora of attractions on offer. They bring their land to mainstream ears yet never sacrifice their ballsy spine rips. Their Bjork cover, Army of Me, is fun yet their strength lies in bicep curling riffs. Their style of metalcore may seem done before, but it isn’t less moon punching as a consequence. The riffs and drums hit like a kraken’s slap, and the yell-singing is surprisingly on tune and deliciously effective. It is overall quite heavy and kicks Demon Hunter’s ass among other greasy, touring asses.
The music tickles my metal bone yet there lies one problem, the album structure. There’s three demo tracks, an updated version of a song off the last album (it makes it worse), a NIN cover, and a Bjork cover; essentially, there’s not many original tracks (the Bjork cover doesn’t count, you bastards). It gets better though, for there is one lame-ass outro included and one absolutely absymal acoustic experiment where the singing does not match the weak instrumentals. The album will also be done before you know it, while the listener encounters the band’s head scratching decisions the entire time.
Due to the album’s bull*** structure it is a thousand percent worse than it should have been, yet heavy tracks remain. The new tracks are great, I just wish there were more. I would have loved to give this a 3.5, after all, they are talented gents and I’m sure their mothers are proud of them. Still, enough is enough! I can imagine some poor souls getting ripped off after purchasing this album and finding not enough new tracks. It’s like that feeling you get when you buy broken DLC. It’s bad business, and it’s just not cool. Then there’s The Reign (Remix) which strips the original song of all its attitude and punch - the outrage! The flaws are so deep here the album doesn’t recover, such a pity considering the band’s potential. Perhaps next time they’ll give us a proper album.
