It's been a long time since I saw Textures opening for Amorphis all the way back in 2016. That was around the same time I started discovering a lot of the "djent" acts like TesseracT or Animals As Leaders, while the genre seemed to be in a popularity apex, especially among some of my friends (sorry, I still don't like Periphery). Dualism and Phenotype got quite a few spins from me at the time, but once I phased out of the genre, the lack of new releases has completely erased Textures from my mind until two years ago when I saw them live again, surprised to have only then encountered their name again.
There's reason for that. Textures have started working on a follow-up to Phenotype right afterwards. I was already out of the loop by the time information about this would be follow-up was revealed, so I'm only finding this out retroactively, but the initial plans involved Genotype being a single-track 45 minute long album that would act as a contrast to Phenotype. Whatever happened in the years since then, with the band being on hiatus between 2017 and 2023, led to the band to scrap the material and start the ideas from scratch. As intriguing as the original version's proposed idea sounds, I can't complain too much about the end result.
Because I'm so far removed from the djent heyday, I don't feel any specific desire for this to follow in that genre's footsteps, so Genotype's lack of complete genre adherence (generic cover art aside) is something that makes the album interesting. For a genre that has "math" in its name, this supposed progressive math metal album (since that's how we generally tag things like these) is quite deceivingly simple. Genotype does not shove chugging syncopated riffs in your face nor does it have overly long epics. It seems like the kind of album more keen on building soundscapes and telling a story, the album being a conceptual one, something that is clearly felt in how much emphasis there is on the lyrics and vocal performance.
The end result is thus softer than I remember the Textures of old being. Yes, there are occasional harsher moments, ones that include heavier chugs and harsh vocals, but they're used sparingly to add contrast. It does occasionally feel like the band pulled back a bit too much from this harsher side of their sound, and I find myself expecting a harsher moment to contrast only for it never to come. That alongside the softness in how the sound isn't overt about its technicality makes Genotype feel like an "easier" album. But not exactly a simple one either, an attentive to background details listen does reveal a complexity in... ugh... textures, rather than in more obvious short-term structures, and even with a less harsh sound, the clean vocals don't sound too pop-leaning either, the closest being during a duet with Charlotte Wessels. Rather, what the songs end up sounding like is something more cinematic and narrative, the former through the songwriting and the latter through the vocal performance.
I'm not sure exactly how Genotype would land for the demographic that had been expecting it since it was first proposed nearly a decade ago. Despite my minuscule personal history with the band, I can encounter Genotype as if from a new band, while also being glad to have encountered an old name again. As far as I'm concerned: welcome back Textures!
