Band:	Outcast
Album:	Awaken The Reason
Style:	Progressive death metal, Progressive thrash metal
Release date:	February 2012

01. Elements
02. Abysmal
03. A Solace From The Shade
04. Awaken The Reason - Part IV: When Dawn Brings Clarity
05. Spin Angular Momenta
06. Unspoken
07. Isolation
08. Fallen Years
09. What Would Be My Final Commitment?
10. Man's Last Failure
11. Awaken The Reason - Part XI: Reprise

There's a fine line between extreme technicality, and just being flat out irritating. While everyone draws this line in a different place, chances are Outcast will draw you in, just to step over that line over and over and over.

...But yes, they do have a certain draw power to them. It's a thrashed-out, slightly proggy technical death metal. Have you ever played that prank as a kid where you rub your thumb into someones palm and tell them it will make their palm smell like peaches, then promptly slap their own hand into their face when they go to smell? Well, listening to Awaken The Reason is much like being the victim of such a joke...Just ten or eleven times consecutively. You'll be suckered in by some frantically aggressive hooks, then slapped in the face with some irritating guitar wankery that just whittles at the nerves. The vocals do the same; they have that nice ambiguity similar to Gojira vocals, but lack the consistency and frequently become these sloppy, forced half shout-half grunt sort of thing.

You know what they should have called this album? The Good, The Bad & The Boring. It actually has some really cool riffs, then drops into that nerve-jangling crap which eventually erodes into incredibly boring tech-death...Then repeat. Not one song on here is either bad or good in its entirety, it's all down to individual segments.

Altogether, Awaken The Reason really isn't very good. Listen to music to enjoy it, if sitting through minutes disposable crap to hear a couple dozen seconds of cool riffing is your thing, then be sure to check this out.