Run With The Torch

I’m constantly on the lookout for great music, one of the methods I apply to achieve my goals is reading reviews in Aardschok a Dutch metal/rock magazine. This featured a positive review of a band called Allegaeon‘s debut album Fragments Of Form And Function. Looking at the artwork and reading the review I wasn’t sure what to expect, I imagined a crossover between melodic metal and thrash metal. Having jotted this album down on my list I went to find out more a few days later. The album wasn’t out yet so I went to their myspace page as is the logical first step nowadays.

Halfway through the first track on myspazz I was awed and had no doubt I’d like the album, love at first sight might yet be real. A few days ago the album got released here all over Europe. Naturally I quickly got my (sweaty) hands on it and have listened to it every day since. Fragments Of Form And Function is a especially great album, and let me tell you why.

It’s not melodic thrash as I first thought it would be but melodic technical death metal, “oh more tech death…” I hear you say, and you’re right. The genre is getting to a point of oversaturation, and it’s hard to find an album that truly stands out. Fragments Of Form And Function doesn’t bring anything new to the table, it technically should go on the shelf with the hundreds of other technical death albums that have been flooding us, if it weren’t for the fact that Allegaeon is qualitatively superior to nearly anything that’s been released in the genre.

I’ll start with the vocals, who mostly remind me of Amon Amarth, a band that is to me quite different for Allegaeon but for the clear growls. That’s almost a contradiction, but to the point it’s not evident for death growls and grunting to be intelligible, most of the time you need to read the lyrics to make them out. Just like previously named viking metallers, you’ll be “kareokeing” (if that were a real verb) when you’ve heard the verses once. The God Particle and Accelerated Evolution realy stand out on this point.

As to be expected with a technical death metal band, the rest of the band consists of very skilled members. Although you’ll the band uses extended range guitars (I think that’s a Schecter C-7 on their videoblogs) you’ll hear no Djent or much ‘chugga chugga oooohmmmm’ (for lack of an onomatopoeia). No you’ll be bombarded with craploads of excellent riffs that flow fluently over and into each other with rarely time for a breather to the point that when the solos kick in, you will realize you weren’t yet listening to a solo. (If that makes any sense) yet it’s not overdooing it. The songs work out every time, without it turning into a “look at my awesomesauce tapping skills fest”. (well… maybe a little bit, but I like such a thing) check out Biomech – Vals no.666. I hardly ever touch the subjects of the drums since I am a guitar geek myself I tend to focus a lot more on the ax’s. There’s nothing much I can remark on them, the mixing could be tweaked a bit in my opinion. Otherwise it’s a full-throttle percussion assault including many short and longer blastbeats.

A nice touch is the acoustic, almost flamenco intermission marking the middle of the album, and the slightly more progressive closing track (it’s longer… ahem) Accelerated Evolution. One might claim Allegaeon arrived a little too late to the tech death scene,  or that the songs lack a little identity to picked up by the more mainstream metal crowd. But that doesn’t mean that if you, like me are a sucker for this sort of earshattering guitarwizardry… You shouldn’t pick this album up, you’ll be missing out.

I’ve never rated an album on this blog before, but that’s amongst other things changing now. More info on this will follow later

There’s a teaser video of the track A Cosmic Question? a little earlier on here be sure to check it out.

score: 9 out of 10