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Rating:
A challenge... this is a challenge, gentlemen.
A challenge to your ears, a challenge to your brain, a challenge to your mind, heart, lungs, stomach, but above all a challenge to your conception of music: this is an album that will make you either marvel or vomit, there is no escape.
I personally love it; in my musical culture, there's a before and after Spiral Architect. This album opened my eyes to soundscapes I had never imagined before, to the most extreme sound experimentation I've ever heard in metal.
Forget melodies, you'll never whistle one of their songs, but you'll be dragged by the vortex created by their absurd syncopations, by the sick vocal lines of Øyvind Hægeland, by the wild and unstoppable bass of Lars K. Norberg (with its volume never so deliberately high on any other album in the world), and you'll be overwhelmed by the purity of sound of an album that will make you sweat cold.
Yes, exactly. Try listening all at once to pieces like "Spinning" and "Insect," and tell me if your adrenaline rush doesn't shoot through the roof. Unfortunately, the true gem of this "true Norwegian technical metal" band (Any reference to Dimm... uh... to ANYONE is purely involu... uh... casual) is the bonus track of the Japanese version, "Prelude To Ruin," a piece rich with sick and engaging musical interweavings.
Returning to the nine tracks of the European album, in 43 minutes and 51 seconds it relentlessly expresses the essence of technical metal, a branch of prog metal focusing on the maximum expression of technique (imagine that) by musicians in search of absolute perfection and experimentation forced to the limit (not in a negative sense). No point in asking how the five sound... they are incredibly precise and powerful, and I was impressed by the vocal performance (criticized by many), especially after reading about Øyvind's current and past presence in various black metal bands or, more generally, bands requiring a "dirty" voice, precisely because of the extreme cleanliness of the singer that often spills over into high and powerful falsettos, gorging on chromatics and various acrobatics.
I advise you to listen to the album, and to, let's say "procure" the bonus track. If you survive the aneurysm that will surely strike you, well, then you're fanatics like me!
Great job guys! And I hope that in 20 years you'll give us another album... (if you read the news on the site you'll understand this statement of mine).
Sick.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Excessit (06:13)
Lost in an orbit ride, climb onto your highest mountain, find the fountain Wandering through shadows, on and on Climb on higher find the fountain Fall into spirals of condemnation And sacrifice your past to the fountain Know not how to get away from yourself Riding through the path of totality surfing hypersonic jets Equation of time Tracking golden spirals, contained within primordial seeds Reincarnation of your self Fall into overdrive, climb onto your highest mountain, find the fountain Wandering through shadows, on and on in despair Your death shroud enters your mind, disguised as virginity Trapped in perverted rites Young child's subverted mind Sheds its atmosphere Modus in rebus est
06 Cloud Constructor: x. Cloud of Unknowing / y. Being and Nothingness / z. Shuffled (05:25)
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By wwwhatemoornet
More than an album, a true challenge with yourself.
Listening to this album in one go is nearly impossible, whether due to the deliberate complexity of the riffs or other factors.
