 
Now within metal if I have learned anything over
my couple years of journalism and my many years
of being an enthusiast it is never make presumptions
on a band before you listen to them, factors like
logo’s, album covers and the sound of a
bands name should give you an accurate feel for
what you’re about to get into but a lot
of the time what you see is nowhere near what
you get. The Faceless for me produced many different
presumptions, I was assuming either a very heavy
death metal or elaborate gothic metal act but
far from it. Their first couple of albums weren’t
the most inventive pieces in regards to musical
maturity or innovative ways of writing, the second
release “Planetary Dulaity” showed
glimpses and snippets of genius with the way in
which some really peculiar sounds, synths and
ideally placed clean vocals, ridding themselves
of this generic breakdown business which was holding
the band back.
“Autotheism” though I’m beginning
to see is what can happen if the band takes the
consideration to really work on the material and
inject that fantastic growth into the whole sound
and not just allow brief moments to arise. I must
say the “Autotheist” series is definitely
some of the greatest material that I think they’ve
put together and to have it as a series was a
brilliant choice and “I” flows through
“II” gracefully into “III”
with altering paces, highs and lows, the atmospheric
sounds and the ominous clean vocals clash with
the technical brutality and piercing growls. What
it appears here that a band that emerged in the
deathcore genre has realised that they’re
a prog band stuck in a deathcore body, what we
have here in “Autotheism” is the band
in their post op phase, allowing the fans and
the rest of the community to adjust to this first
step towards their change in direction and next
time around we will have a full fledged prog act.
I’ve noticed a few dates pop up next year
for The Faceless touring the UK, after this I
must say I’m rather interested in attending
and seeing what they bring to the table live,
deathcore acts are all about aggressive stage
presences but prog bands normally take preliminarily
laid back trippy stage shows, so this is definitely
a band I’ll be keeping an eye on.
4/5
Review By James Webb
|
