Band:	Sunpocrisy
Album:	Eyegasm, Hallelujah!
Style:	Progressive death metal, Post-metal, Atmospheric sludge metal
Release date:	November 01, 2015
A review by:	BitterCOld

01. Eyegasm
02. Mausoleum Of The Almost
03. Transmogrification
04. Eternitarian
05. Of Barbs And Barbules
06. Kairos Through Aion
07. Gravis Vociferatur
08. Festive Garments
09. Hallelujah!

This marks the second half of my Italian eyebrow-raising titled album feast. Mangia. So wtf exactly happened to Sunpocrisy?

Many years ago when I first started reviewing for MS, Sunpocrisy were amongst the first bands to reach out and send me a demo to write about. I kind of liked it, and remarked they had potential and hoped they would develop their own sonic identity.

With 2012's Samaroid Dioramas and now Eyegasm, Hallelujah!, consider potential realized.

Eyegasm, Hallelujah is as good as it is oddly named. It is post-metal, it has your chill moments, your build-ups, and your explosions. Sort of standard post-it note stuff, so why am I so high on it?

For starters, take the typical build-up of a post-metal song, at least of so many I've reviewed. Slow, clean intro, the "theme" of the song is introduced. It gradually builds up, swells, then someone stomps on a distortion pedal while the front man starts screaming into a mic that gets 50% the final mix, making me want to impale my eardrums with a corkscrew.

These Eye-talians took that general layout and spread it out like tomato sauce, beautiful tomato sauce*, over pizza dough. The entire album almost functions as one super-extended song structure following that layout. The songs themselves start mellow, flow into one another as the intensity in general builds. There are a few intermittent spikes in velocity, to be sure, but in general the first half the album is largely chill. When you get to "Gravis Vociferatur" things have changed and the intensity and pace are cranked up, just like the crescendo most bands hit about the four minute mark of their average song.

The music itself is also great. Everything has its space. It's open. Eyegasm is a great headphones album, as you can pick out all the cool, interesting things everyone is doing. After several listens I'm still finding little bits way off to the right or left to focus on and enjoy. Also of note, as much as I enjoy it, I think an album exclusively composed of either style would get tedious, so kudos to them on their song and album construction weaving back and forth between the two.

Vocals alternate between decent clean and the harsh "I'M SHOUTING AT YOU! RAWRSGJJGHH!" style? but at their most harsh they are mixed considerably better than most bands, not dominating the music but working as part of it. Furthermore at other points they utilize the rawrgh vocals, but bury it deeper in the mix behind the instrumentation and clean vocals. To go back to my sauce analogy, it's like when you have a great spoon of some ragu and immediately taste the tomato, the basil, the garlic? is that a hint of vino rosso? They are subtly deployed to good effect. Listen to the four minute mark of "Eternatarian" to catch this in action.

So, yeah, enjoyed this. If you like post-metal, check it out. I'd start with the aforementioned "Eternatarian", or from the more harsh side of the album, being it's that it's the holidays, check out "Festive Garmnets."

[url= https://sunpocrisy.bandcamp.com/album/eyegasm-hallelujah]Bandcamp, Hallelujah![/url]

*red sauce - yeah, use about a thimble's worth of salsa tomate on pizzas in South America. Without it, pizza is just cheese on dough? a super thick quesadilla. I miss proper pizza dearly.