Band:	Fallujah
Album:	Undying Light
Style:	Progressive death metal
Release date:	March 15, 2019
A review by:	musclassia

01. Glass House
02. Last Light
03. Ultraviolet
04. Dopamine
05. The Ocean Above
06. Hollow
07. Sanctuary
08. Eyes Like The Sun
09. Distant And Cold
10. Departure

There's something really satisfying about discovering a promising band early on in their career, and then seeing them develop and mature into something special. The flip side to that is the disappointment that comes when said band ruins all that hard work and releases a complete let-down, which is sadly the case here.

The release of The Flesh Prevails and subsequently Dreamless saw the promising progressive-leaning, tech-death sound of Fallujah's debut album evolve into an utterly unique combination of intense tech-death with prominent ambient-inspired melodic soundscapes, uplifting lead guitars and progressive songwriting. Across each album you went from stretches of relentless technical riffing and blasting drums accompanied with ripping growls, shimmering ambience, and pyrotechnic and/or dainty leads, to stretches of shimmering ambience and dainty/pyrotechnic leads accompanied by energetic drumming, sometimes semi-jazzy bass playing and occasional but effective use of clean vocals (male and female).

Since the release of those two records, however, one guitarist has left and the growling lead vocalist Alex Hofmann has been replaced by Anthony Palermo, whose more metalcore screaming style is a striking change in approach. What also becomes apparent within the first couple of songs is how much of the rest of their sound has changed, particularly the fact that almost everything I listed in the last paragraph to describe their previous albums has either been heavily reduced in prominence or just removed completely. What has it been replaced with? Monotony.

What really stood out to me when I gave it a closely attentive listen was how many of these songs involved prolonged mid-to-fast tempo riffing on one or two chords, over and over. In contrast to the technical, exhilarating and often groovy riffing frequently happening on past efforts, many of these songs, particularly in the first half, are so sonically invariant at times, it is honestly shocking that losing a vocalist could alter the instrumental side of an extreme metal band so much. The worst offender for this is "Dopamine", an incredibly monotonous song that barely develops over its 5-minute runtime; comparing this song to the similarly lengthy "Sapphire" from The Flesh Prevails really demonstrates the change in approach across the board.

But it's not just the riffs that have changed; the drums are so muted here energy-wise, compared to the constant double-bass frenzies and assaults that permeated their past records, that the whole sound feels flatter this time round. However, really the most perplexing change this time around is the drastic reduction in the ambient side of the band and the prominence of the lead guitar work. On the likes of The Flesh Prevails, even during the most intense moments, there was this uplifting ambient sheen that really made their sound unique. On here, that sheen very rarely appears, particularly in the first half of the album, and even when songs enter softer phases, the unique atmospheres from the previous albums don't really emerge in the same way. Additionally, those lead guitars, that either livened up the atmosphere with effective melodies or delivered technical flamboyance to proceedings, are also absent or subdued for large stretches. The only songs which really feel like Fallujah tracks from previous albums are "Sanctuary" and "Eyes Like The Sun", but even they feel like Fallujah-by-numbers. Comparing "Last Light" to previous early album cuts like "Starlit Path" and "Adrenaline", it's scarcely recognizable as the same band; it's more of a metalcore song than an ambient/progressive death metal song, and not a particularly interesting one, which could also be said for a few other tracks here.

One last criticism, to avoid this running on too much longer; there is a surprising lack of diversity here. The variety in approaches in the old band's sound meant that an album like Dreamless could flip from 'typical' ambient tech-death romps like "Scar Queen", to the proggy melodicism of "The Void Alone", or even the electronic-driven "Les Silences" without losing any of their appeal. In contrast, the songs across the first half of this album end up feeling quite repetitive. Furthermore, the one major sonic deviation on the album, the penultimate track, "Distant And Cold", completely fails to live up to the quality of previous non-metal(-dominated) songs like "Alone With You" and "Dreamless", instead being a repetitive trudge driven throughout by an unmemorable riff and only occasionally lightened up with some semi-interesting shimmering lead guitars, in some way acting as something of a microcosm of the album as a whole.

I don't want the takeaway message of this review to be "bands should never change their sound", because if Fallujah had never done that before, they wouldn't have developed the sound that I'm so disappointed to see them abandon here. Having said that, if you're going to completely revamp what has been a unique and successful approach, at least make sure the new sound is interesting on its own terms, which I really don't believe is the case here. It's not a bad album, it's just entirely unremarkable, which is a crying shame for a band that managed to really distinguish themselves in what can be quite a repetitive sub-genre.