Review Summary: I suggest you play it safe, and love me from a distance
Irrenoid is not short on ambition at all when it comes to deciding how much genre-bending he chooses to implement in his music; it's like he was asked "how many genres can I mix into one package but still have it make sense?" and simply responded with "yes." This has a lot of different parts, some of which work better than others, but all come together in a surprisingly cohesive whole.
I personally am not the most high on the Corpse influence in the early goings with tracks like "Filthy Blood" and "Lantern Dance", with the super deep bass-y vocal tone and everything. ".crimsonprotocol" is probably my favorite of the songs that sound super industrial, and it's likely because of the change of vocal tone. Luckily, most of the album strays from that sound which I feel will be the most divisive influence here.
Other highlights include "Now I Know" feels straight up like it came out of the Paramore playbook circa 2007-2008, "Shadow of Guilt" (a re-done version of the single he released in 2023) which is a significant step up production-wise from the first release, and "Verkution" which forays into a very cool take on atmospheric black metal, and apart from the drums sounding a bit quiet, it does quite well in that experiment. The chiptune cover "HLDN 2ME" is another major highlight, with StarChip providing vocals in a cool sounding sort of pixelated 8-bit form. "Black Petals" is a serene emo-piano style song with a similarly lo-fi approach as "HLDN 2ME" and it works just about as well.
What ultimately ties everything together at the end of the day, is undoubtedly the symphonic ending of "V (Finalé)", which is also the longest track on the album at about 5 and a half minutes. A lot of this album is focused on brevity, with 9 of the 15 tracks not even breaking the 3-minute mark, which allows that final piece to stand out in that regard. The closer feels a bit like the emotional climax and allowing it the time to build was the right call. While it would've been nice for other tracks to have lengthier builds, it makes room for this to be the ultimate standout.
Overall, while this isn't my favorite album of the year, this is certainly a mission statement and very ambitious, and I cannot knock that at all.
