As you can remember, I rarely listen to music from USA. However, I recently received a newsletter on my email with a proposal to listen to Trivium new album. Also in some of my recommendations on Youtube there were several covers for songs from this album. Well, this means that today we will have very cool guys from America.
My Rating: 84/100 Best song: Bending the Arc to Fear
Service Yandex Music determined that the song Sickness Unto You is similar to Open the Hell's Gate (EACH OF THE DAYS) - that’s all you need to know about how such algorithms work.
And then we will act. I read a lot of articles on art and culture. And often I notice one point among the authors: a magnificent train of thought, but the emphasis is ugly. Something like this can be said about this album. Obviously, the guys wanted to make a very technical and very complex album, but at the same time still make something attractive to average listener. And just then, with such a desire, some uncomfortable feeling begins. For example, this is noticeable in the album structure: an increasing intro, then three very powerful tracks, and then the 5th track, which seemed to me too difficult to understand. On track 6, I wanted to turn off this album. A pleasant surprise was that the 7th, 8th and 9th tracks were the best in the album. And the last track seemed to have been made just to somehow end the album. In general, the impressions of the album are positive. There is no sense of incompleteness that I usually have after such albums.
The vocalist is flawless. There is a weak variety of vocal techniques - it's noticeable that the idea prevails here, and not the vocalist's skill's shades. However, the voice is very strong, which, coupled with sharp lyrics, gives a tangible effect. However, there is one interesting point. It consists approximately of the following: from the point of view of instrumental parts, it's extreme metal, but there are few extreme vocal techniques. It might look strange, but it looks interesting here.
Instrumental parts: this situation is twofold. On the one side, riffs are very hooky and very groovy. For example, I liked the main riff from Catastrophist so much that I immediately wanted to tune my guitar on Standard A# and play it. It can also be noted that riffs have a very high technical complexity: I didn't immediately understand how this is played and this is a pleasant fact. On the other side, in some segments you can hear stroking the power chords using the simplest alternate picking technique. I think this is a negative point - I didn't expect this from these guys. Now about the rhythm section. Bass has a pronounced upper part of tone. Because of this, the bass is clearly audible in the mix - this is a nice detail, especially when you listen through cheap headphones. However, the bassist doesn't have a lot of interesting parts - I can’t single out one thing. Drums - everything is pretty predictable here. Here you can hear very intense drum loops. However, it's not possible to tell too much about drums - the composer's attention on guitars is noticeably too much.
Usually mainstream rock bands completely disappoint me. Yes, this can be understood: in the modern world, popularity requires far from what experts say. But these guys are one of the very few exceptions. They have such a high skill level that their flaws can only be felt. Specifically, in this album, a big bet on the general idea and on guitars is noticeable: sharp lyrics and difficult riffs. Whether this bet has played or not - perhaps everyone will decide for himself. But I can say that this album is cool.
