Judging by the two year old song "All We Ever Knew And Loved" and the newly released title track, we have a serious contender for progressive album AOTY right here.

Looking forward to listening to this, it's been a long wait for new music from these talented musicians.

Written by Nejde on 12.08.2023 at 17:29

Judging by the two year old song "All We Ever Knew And Loved" and the newly released title track, we have a serious contender for progressive album AOTY right here.

I thought their first album was great but these songs are just on another level. Looking like a great sophomore effort well worth the wait.

Can't wait ...
I still listen to their debut a few times a week. Easily one of my all time favourite albums

The anticipation... sincerely hope my self-hype doesn't burn me. Will spin this in the next 24 hours.

This is one of those rare albums where you can actually believe that it required a sizeable chunk of those 8 years after its predecessor to assemble - a whopping 77 minutes of elaborately crafted music with pristine production, a litany of strong guests, top-tier orchestral/non-metal arrangements on certain songs, and complex, at-times genre-hopping songs. From a purely production standpoint, it's a very impressive achievement

In terms of actually enjoying the music - from first listen it's pretty close to the debut, in terms that I do like it quite a lot, but I perhaps find myself appreciating it as a finely crafted piece of art slightly more than purely enjoying. Still, there are a number of great moments on it - the build towards the climax of the title track is delightful (Dan Tompkins is a welcome returning guest), and it's great to see Aarlon's Pritam Adhikary delivering a fine performance on Tyranny. Will naturally need a few more listens before I can begin to think of reviewing it, and I expect to enjoy each of those listens

Edit: On second listen, this is such an impressive album, and the vast majority of songs have things about them that I love or really enjoy, this will definitely compete with Of Golden Verse for prog-metal AOTY

Written by 24emd on 17.11.2023 at 06:20

The anticipation... sincerely hope my self-hype doesn't burn me.

I thought of that myself.

This is exactly what comes in mind when I think of progressive metal. There's a lot to unpack here, and it's all amazing. 10/10, prog AOTY by far

This is very obviously a good production -- I just don't think it had many moments that stand out. Beautiful soundscape, though.

I've been struggling so much with this one tbh, there's some outstanding moments, some of the Instrumentation is absolutely breathtaking, "Watching The Earth Sink", and "All We Ever Knew And Loved" standing out in particular, but there's also moments that I find so tricky to fully sink in. Overall, it's a decent progressive album, but as a whole it just lacks that consistency for me, making it fall just shy of a great progressive metal album to simply a good one.

A few incredible songs, but this one didn't hit as hard as I'd hoped. Overall I prefer their debut, even though the individual highlights here surpass those of A Dream In Static.

I prefer this over Shylmagoghnar's Convergence.

Definitely a great album, needs more listens to sink in properly.

I guess this is one of those albums that require multiple spins and a lot of attention, but so far I like it. The production is amazing.

It is hardly categorised as "metal" any more. After listening to the single "Let the Truth Speak", I was expecting a lot more from this. Not worth the 8 year wait for me.

Unreasonably lengthy borefest

I get serious Interstellar soundtrack vibes on the last track, “All We Ever Knew And Loved.” And I can’t not hear the Mission Impossible theme at 6:03 in “The Lesser Evil,” so I guess this release is cinematic