After the departure of Ezra Haynes, their ex-vocalist, the technical death metal band Allegaeon has declared Riley McShane as their new vocalist to replace Ezra. It’s always considered a major change when the vocalist is replaced, Riley hasn’t just played his part perfectly, but maybe better than Ezra in some cases. The band kept introducing the same kind they used to introduce but with a new vocalist who has a deeper voice and who can introduce more than one layer.
So let’s talk about the album, it’s a technical death metal album that contains 12 tracks. The album had a great start: Proponent for Sentience I – The Conception, All Hail Science and From Nothing. In my opinion those are one of the best track of the album. As a technical death album it’s always nice to start with strong tracks.
The strengths of these songs are the great vocals, the fast beat drums, the awesome riffs and the catchy solos, which are everything you would enjoy in a technical death metal album.
The 4th track had an acoustic intro and an acoustic outro, which is not usual to see Allegaeon introducing, but it was a great experience. Generally the track is pretty good and those three acoustic minutes at the end were like a rest after a great one-third of the album, in addition to being soothing.
The 5th track is one of my personal favorites, and one of the strongest tracks too. Riley did a great job in it and I really enjoyed the solo near the end of the track.
The 6th track has a symphonic start, which is pretty good, and generally the track is above-average. Seemed like a filler track but that symphonic intro added some kind of change to it.
Track no. 7 seemed like a filler track that I didn’t mind hearing. It contained a good solo and it was one of the shortest tracks, 04:21 minutes.
Followed by the 8th track which is a return to the level of the first one-third of the album. Catchy riffs followed by a great solo.
The last one-third of the album is at a level a little bit less than the level of the 2nd one-third, first track is a filler, second track is pretty good and the riffs were so catchy and third track is one of the best track of the album, pretty good clean vocals (for the first time in this album, which reminded me of Soilwork for a reason) and a great solo in the middle of the song and its second part after one minute and forty seconds approximately through the song which was pretty awesome too. No need to mention the great riffs which are something you get used to while listening to
Allegaeon. To be honest that track saved the last one-third of the album.
The 4th track, which is track no. 12, is a cover for Rush’s Subdivisions song. In my opinion the album didn’t need that cover song as it’s not the same style as the other songs, it was a power metal song (which was pretty awesome by the way) but its place isn’t in that album. Maybe if they released it alone or with an instrumental version of the album it would have been better. But still it didn’t change my opinion about the album and how awesome it is.
So this album is definitely one of the top albums of 2016, and I give it an overall rating of 8.5/10. Allegaeon just never introduces mediocre stuff, you can always expect outstanding albums from them.
Nabil Hossam / Metalheads Forever Magazine
