Epoch of Unlight "The Continuum Hypothesis" CD
[The End]
I do enjoy this band's brand of creative death/thrash, but I have to say that I would've hoped for a few more advancements on this record seeing as it's been four years since their last full-length.  Perhaps lineup changes have had something to do with that, but while a very competent and promising set of songs, as a whole this full-length isn't something that really blows me away.  Admittedly there are some incredibly creative riffs on this thing that point to some amazing potential for the band, but the overall songwriting doesn't maintain that level of innovation consistently, and the recording and performances also need a little polishing up to do the work justice as well.  The sound is pretty clear, but it's also overly dry and sort of plain sounding, so the basslines often get lost and the guitars have a dirty sort of choppiness to them that doesn't really work out all that well.  It's listenable, make no mistake, but I think the guitar tone needs a lot more oomph and the bass needs to come up in the mix as well.  The drums sound pretty good though slightly unbalanced in favor of some of the cymbals, and the snarling vocals are fine.  The biggest issue I have with the recording is that the guitar tone often creates the illusion that the playing is a little bit rougher than it is, and since the drummer falters just a bit from time to time it comes across as overly raw at certain points.  In general the band's style is a blend of thrash and death metal with plenty of traditional metal riffing in tow adding a good sense of energy, and I like that, but the snarling vocal screams are pretty generic and in my opinion detract from the more creative aspects of the music.  The vocals basically sound like generic melodic Swedish death metal, which associates more of that influence with the melodies present in the playing style than is actually there in reality, since most of the influences at work here more than likely predate that whole wave.  The writing isn't overly original in its entirety, which is fine, but rather than several standout songs there are really just standout riffs within about an hour's worth of decent songs that are consistently good but never exceptional.  "The End of All" is among the few songs with melodic black metal insinuations compliments of some intense speeds and tremolo picking, while the tail end of "Denubrum" slows the pace and calms down a bit with some really unexpected chord phrasings and dissonance that stand out to me, but again: It's riffs, not songs that leave a mark here.  Closer "The Scarlet Thread" is the only song that sort of hooks me at the start and never lets up, combining Swedish tinged thrash with plenty of cool picking patterns and those discordant arpeggiated riffs that always catch my ear.  Sadly the record's already played out for 50 minutes at that point, so there's a lot of filler prior to this one awesome song through and through.  I'm not wild on the layout at all as it just looks tacky to me.  The collage of band photos under the CD tray is pretty awful, and elsewhere it's tiny text over weird sci-fi landscapes or something like that, and it just doesn't grab me at all.  The lyrics are a little strange and don't do much for me either, part of which is due to the forced rhyming, but beyond that it's also that I'm just not into this weird sort of obtuse storytelling or what have you, with lines like, "The tyranny of persecution, the curse of broken oaths, the condemning of interment... where others would lose hope..."  Nitpicky listener that I am, I will confess that with a stronger recording this would be a more interesting and forceful effort.  I think the band has some strengths that they need to focus more attention on, as well as some weak spots that need a little work, but they're a pretty good act all around.  I'm sort of indifferent about this record because nothing really strikes me and it's a little longer than it needs to be considering most of the songs are fairly similar to one another, but it's more good than bad and they do write nice riffs.  I hold The End Records to a pretty high standard, so I'm perhaps being mildly overcritical of this release, but it's certainly not something that's going to redefine the metal genre in any way, and as stated earlier, I was definitely hoping for a more considerable progression since their last full-length dropped so long ago. (6/10)
Running time - 53:14, Tracks: 11
[Notable tracks: Under Starside Skies, The Scarlet Thread]
The End Records - http://www.theendrecords.com

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