It's not necessarily a constant lingering similarity, but some of the vocals/vocal effects and other instrumental decisions (e.g. talk box guitar solo in Slough) are eerily similar to Tool. I found myself enjoying it more in the moments where it went a little bit away from that direction; the second half of Usurper was strong

Written by musclassia on 25.02.2025 at 11:54

It's not necessarily a constant lingering similarity, but some of the vocals/vocal effects and other instrumental decisions (e.g. talk box guitar solo in Slough) are eerily similar to Tool. I found myself enjoying it more in the moments where it went a little bit away from that direction; the second half of Usurper was strong

I get what you mean, the first half of "Usurper" has big Tool vibes.

A treat for Tool fans, this - agreed that it is better the more it moves away from that. The outro of Abyss is the top moment, for me.

7.5

Give me a whole album of "Red Veil" and I'd give this a 9. Is that even the same band? I totally agree that they sound far better when they're not trying to be Tool. The clean vocals in particular are especially bad...not quite off-key but something just as bad (off-timbre?) I think their at their best when they write proggy sludge as they did with that track.

Not a fan of the production either. It works very well with the track I mentioned, but for the rest it's far too raw to complement those intricacies their attempting.