Band:	Exivious
Album:	Liminal
Style:	Fusion, Instrumental, Progressive metal
Release date:	November 08, 2013
Guest review by:	qlacs

01. Entrust
02. One's Glow
03. Alphaform
04. Deeply Woven
05. Triguna
06. Movement
07. Open
08. Immanent

Exivious, and fusion music in general is to be taken slowly. Enjoying it bit by bit, until you are able to take in the full picture. I always have to remind myself of this simple fact, otherwise I'd turn to some other, more straightforward music. With this in mind, maybe you are already planning to skip this one - though I'd advise you not to, especially if you're new to fusion/jazz metal music.

On the surface, Liminal is perfectly representing why fusion came to be; the whole record sounds just the way you'd expect from such: it's clear that the songs are intricate from the start, and the musicians show great level of skill. It's jazz, it's constantly shifting, focused on instruments (after all they don't have a single word spoken on the album), and it's of rare breed. They sound like the classic moments of Cynic, which is hardly a surprise since these guys are massive fans of them and even toured together. But is that enough?

Definitely not. Liminal often lacks the ecstatic points, moments where all the ideas culminate together, breaks that introduce new heights of emotions... basically things that make it interesting and stand above the rest of what anyone can offer nowadays. They start dribbling some ideas together and they just seem to go on and on forever, repeating with some additional instrument and very little variation, but most of the time it really goes nowhere, or they don't let them step out of the little frame they put them into initially. It's like when a river flows and reaches its delta going through the straight route, it doesn't occur to it that it can go on a different one...

I would pick the first two and the last two songs as the highlights, with the addition of "Deeply Woven." The rest just simply gets across flat after a few spins.