 
“Shredding From Reading”, this is
the catchphrase associated with heroic British
thrash act Sylosis (who are of course based in
Reading), they’ve been around the country
touring their little asses off the past few years
and are at long last finally beginning to make
headway in the rest of the world including America.
They already had 3 albums under their belt with
this latest release being number 4, it’s
only their second however to not feature ex-vocalist
Jamie Graham and with what I said about their
last album Edge of the Earth they’ve got
a lot of things to prove to me if they want me
to keep coming out to see them with the standard
their live act has diminished to without Graham
leading the force. Edge of the Earth was a firm
well written release just wasn’t on par
quality wise with Conclusion of an Age, all down
to losing a powerful front man and phenomenal
singer as live Josh Middleton is nowhere near
as dominant and his vocals just aren’t as
sinister or vast in range as Graham’s were.
Right to it then, opener “Out From Below”
kicks off slow and methodical as has become synonymous
with Sylosis, long winded soft introductions before
kicking in with a blast. Notable comment to insert
right about here is that from what I can hear
there is a very noticeable improvement in vocals,
the technicality as always is in full force and
impressive as always, especially the structure
of this particularly song as during its 6 minute
duration there’s that many twists and turns
that I just cannot get bored. “Fear The
World” kicks off with a metalcore sounding
riff you’d expect to hear from a band like
Bullet For My Valentine before blasting into the
thrash metal they usually create, it crops up
again during points of the song before fading
to a long outro. That’s the thing with Sylosis
they take the symphonic and atmospheric elements
to almost dramatic levels the same way classical
music would be composed.
“Enshrined” though from what I’ve
heard is a complete waste of time, it’s
like a 4 minute track, then silence for 15 minutes
and a slight soft 2 minute interlude before finishing,
what the hell is the point in that? I thought
it’d be some hidden track like after 10
minutes of silence there would be a final track
somewhere but that never materialised. The rest
of the tracks are everything you would expect
from Sylosis just with improvements to push their
“new” band; “Paradox”,
“Monolith” and “Born Anew”
all tracks that have that technical style but
try to each experiment with separate additions
from other aspects of the genre to spruce it up
if you will, it does pay off because amongst the
technicality there needs to be some parts to just
calm it down a bit and bring us down to reality.
So then a much needed sum up then; a definite
improvement from Edge of the Earth, not quite
better than Conclusion of an Age but I’m
not going to lie it’s not far off, vocals
see a drastic improvement as well as some experimentation
that adds some familiarity to the technical sea
of riffs and licks that we usually hear, I actually
can see myself listening to this one more that
twice before getting fed up of it. Safe to say
they proved to me they have still got it just
cannot see that live show having any life pushed
back into it as I think Middleton has really gone
as far as he can with that.
4/5
Review by James Webb
|
