Band:	Textures
Album:	Silhouettes
Style:	Progressive math metal
Release date:	May 2008

01. Old Days Born Anew
02. The Sun's Architect
03. Awake
04. Laments Of An Icarus
05. One Eye For A Thousand
06. State Of Disobedience
07. Storm Warning
08. Messengers
09. To Erase A Lifetime

Two years ago Textures released Drawing Circles, an album that became an immediate favourite amongst fans of intelligent extreme music due to its convoluted rhythmic structures and transcendental, elevating atmospheric interludes. With a sophomore effort as powerful as that, it is not surprising that many people have been waiting for Silhouettes, the latest album by the Dutch band, with a fair amount of anticipation. Well, lo and behold Textures fans: this album doesn't disappoint at all, although the band's evolution didn't take them into places that most of us were expecting.

Considering the phenomenal quality of the mellower aspects of Drawing Circles I was fully convinced that this was the approach that the band would favour on Silhouettes. Instead, the band decided to focus on polishing the more extreme aspects of their sound. The Meshuggah worship is more or less gone, with thrashier structures and groove-laden riffs taking over in place of polymetry clinic exercises. The improvement is immediately noticeable, with the band finally truly finding their own identity in terms of extreme metal. "Old Days Born Anew" is a prime example of this improved aspect of Textures' music, with the great thrash riff augmented by occasional blast beats and powerful, cleanly sung interludes. "State Of Disobedience" also acts as proof of the band's new maturity, since even though it is a rhythmically complex song, it never loses its groove and is as mosh worthy as it is technical. In fact all the songs on this album feature plenty of this captivating type of extremity, which never gets boring. Even though I was expecting and hoping for the band to focus on the more mellow aspects of their sound, the high quality of their extreme side more than makes up for it.

Nevertheless, Textures' largest forte is still Eric Kolsbeek's powerful singing voice and how it interacts with the more mellow, textured soundscapes that the band occasionally ventures into. For this reason, "Messengers" and especially the superb "Awake" are the definite highlights of this album. When the heavy guitars are stripped down and all that is left is the extreme elation projected by Eric's vocals and an incredible keyboard accompaniment is when the Textures' largest trait comes to the fore: this music has soul. For this reason alone anyone interested in extreme music should hear this album.