One Hundred Thousand - Liminal - review
One Hundred Thousand - Liminal - review
Tracklist
01. Liminal02. Insider Trading
03. All The Nothing
04. Intruder
05. Let You (In)
06. Hidden:Below
A review by
musclassia March 04, 2025
As a 12-track, 72-minute record, Zodiac was a sophomore album unafraid to go all-out, and while there was the odd imperfection as a result, it was overall a successful project. It was also one that the band were clearly proud to share, between the year-long creep of each individual track being released and the extent to which their online profiles still focus on the record. For whatever reason, Liminal has been given less public attention by the group; it’s not on Bandcamp, it’s not mentioned on their official website, and there is but one recent Facebook post announcing its release with little fanfare. From having listened to it a few times, I’m struggling to see why this is the case, as I can’t imagine a record that bleeds this much audible emotion was not created with a lot of love and care.
Although it’s a half-hour EP, on the streaming platforms where Liminal is available, it comes as an hour-long package, with the ‘regular’ version followed by an instrumental-only edition. I haven’t actually listened to these instrumental versions, as to be frank I can’t see the point of doing so when the vocals are so integral to the appeal of the album. Stylistically, what listeners can expect from this album (and One Hundred Thousand’s previous releases) is a melodic djent-rooted progressive metal sound that largely eschews the metalcore/extreme elements used by many other djent acts, with the vast majority of Rich Matos’ vocals being clean. His tone, particularly on a song like “All The Nothing”, reminds me of Daniel Tompkins, and the fairly accessible writing also somewhat of Tompkins’ solo record Ruins; it’s slightly more oriented towards prog, but not to the extent that TesseracT becomes the more logical comparison.
The full-hour runtime of Liminal is comprised of 11 tracks, and that’s because the brief opening title track is already instrumental-only; it does have a slightly disjointed transition into the first ‘full’ song “Insider Trading”, which doesn’t give the best first impression, but once the band are fully up to gear, the EP quickly comes alive. This first song has some delicate textures reminiscent of aspects of Tompkins’ solo and collective work, and it also takes my mind a bit to Cyderian Son’s strong 2021 Necropolis EP in terms of overall atmosphere, but with less rhythmic complexity. One Hundred Thousand do flex their progressive muscles across the record with complex riffs and rhythms, but everything works in service to the melodic appeal of the song, and “Insider Trading” has real well-measured peaks and lulls, the vocals and instrumental textures hitting the right tone in any given moment to maximize the impact of the track’s journey.
There’s also shifts in the vocal approach; for the very Tompkins-esque moody bass-driven verse of “All The Nothing”, Matos goes for a restrained yet seductive delivery, but when the djent crunch compels it, he has a more forceful, almost shouted approach ready to go, and can similarly soar into higher registers in the chorus of “Intruder”. The initial verse-chorus exchange in this particular song is already engaging, but man, the way it escalates in the second half for a truly stirring and anthemic bridge takes it to a whole new level, particularly when immediately followed by a simple but truly effective guitar solo. Some of the vocal layering and instrumental texturing almost borders on the way in which Devin Townsend’s songs can overwhelm at their majestic peaks.
I thoroughly enjoy “Intruder”, and I also get a lot out of the simpler hookiness of “Let You (In)”, but an EP that feels as if it grows in quality as it progresses reaches a definite peak with the beautiful finale that is “Hidden:Below”. The tender emotionality of the song and vocals against the warm instrumental backdrops takes my mind to the similarly effective ending of Hollow Hour’s Till The Grey Skies Are Gone or the Design Flaw EP I covered in Clandestine Cuts a few years ago, but the straightforward chorus hook is perhaps even more resonant, and the mid-track change of pace with the tom drums and a delectable echoing guitar motif is the cherry on top.
Liminal might not be the best release thus far in 2025, but it’s the one that’s resonated most strongly with me on an emotional level, and I hope some of the other melodic prog releases yet to come this year have it in them to resonate to a similar degree. As far as One Hundred Thousand are concerned, while this EP may not have the spectacle of Zodiac, Liminal is still very much its equal, and is something worth making a big deal out of.
Written on 04.03.2025 by
Written on 04.03.2025 by
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