Thanks for a very fair and honest review Radu! I can totally see where you are coming from with it - it is stylistically scattered in a way that I can very much see resulting in a lack of cohesion for listeners. Funnily enough, the songs were written years earlier as part of the bedroom solo writing I was doing in Guitar Pro as a beginner metal musician, and the concept only came later as I looked back at the songs I wanted to try and render with actual instruments and saw a loose through-line in their respective themes that I could turn into an overarching story concept.

Ambition exceeding talent is probably a fair assessment; this material was almost all written before I joined a band and got more experience at writing metal music, and I doubt I would come up with material like this if I tried writing something intended to be similarly repetition-based today. I did revise the songs to varying degrees between reviving them and committing them to track to tighten them up and remove/improve the weakest elements, but a lot of the core riffs and structures were retained, and that early-days amateurism is present as a result. At the same time, I have retained pride over the music I wrote back then, and wanted to retain the elements I appreciated/enjoyed most in these songs, for better or worse.

Written by musclassia on 04.06.2026 at 12:35

Funnily enough, the songs were written years earlier as part of the bedroom solo writing I was doing in Guitar Pro as a beginner metal musician. [...] Ambition exceeding talent is probably a fair assessment; this material was almost all written before I joined a band and got more experience at writing metal music, and I doubt I would come up with material like this if I tried writing something intended to be similarly repetition-based today. I did revise the songs to varying degrees between reviving them and committing them to track to tighten them up and remove/improve the weakest elements, but a lot of the core riffs and structures were retained, and that early-days amateurism is present as a result.

That does explain a lot about why I have the gripes I have with the songwriting. The sound is neat but there's a disconnect between the songwriting I hear on Seat Of The Fire and the one here. I am curious to see how a similar concept would work if you started from scratch with the experience you have today.

Written by musclassia on 04.06.2026 at 12:35

At the same time, I have retained pride over the music I wrote back then, and wanted to retain the elements I appreciated/enjoyed most in these songs, for better or worse.

Goes back to my "music that someone wanted to make" point. Bet the younger version of you who wrote this would be delighted to hear how it turned out.

Written by RaduP on 04.06.2026 at 12:53

Written by musclassia on 04.06.2026 at 12:35

Funnily enough, the songs were written years earlier as part of the bedroom solo writing I was doing in Guitar Pro as a beginner metal musician.

That does explain a lot about why I have the gripes I have with the songwriting. The sound is neat but there's a disconnect between the songwriting I hear on Seat Of The Fire and the one here. I am curious to see how a similar concept would work if you started from scratch with the experience you have today.

There's also the fact that the primary songwriter on SOTF was our guitarist Jess, in addition to it having a full band collaborating on it; I am impressed at early-stage one-man bands that are able to both try something different and be tight with their self-editing. Still, even the songs I have written for Vulgaris (the main ones currently published are Asundre and Goat Bong) have more mature and tighter songwriting than this album I would say.

I would quite like to have a project in addition to Vulgaris that was oriented more in this direction, but I'd want it to be a collaborative band rather than taking this forward as a solo project I reckon. Still, maybe if I don't find that, I might try writing some more stuff in this vein solo at some point in the future.

Reading the review while listening to the album, I get why and where Radu struggles to thoroughly enjoy it and why he compares it to demos. I think the album is meant to immerse you and it is written and produced in such a way. A big plus for me is the concept and the narrative; I enjoyed it a lot more when I listened through headphones and read the lyrics. The artwork and the logo are both very fitting in the general presentation.

All that said, I agree with Radu that, on musical perspective, I persisted with this mainly because it is Matt's album; but I am glad that I did. After the third listen, I started to really get into it, which says something about how we 'consume' music nowadays. There is so much out there that it is mostly a matter of luck to find something that urges you to replay it. This album has no obvious hooks, at least to my ears, which is a shame because many people may skip it due to this exact reason.

Overall, I think the vocals are improved, and I very much enjoy how the music jumps to different styles and sounds. In my opinion, "Oblivion" remains my favourite track, and the other songs feel like they are all leading to this final track. I also quite like "Futility II" and the grindcore touch of "Futility III" was a nice surprise. To me, the album gets repetitive at times, and I do think it would go very well with mushrooms or weed, although it might also give a very frightening or paranoid experience. I listened to it sober, all three times, so I still owe it another go under some kind of influence.

Written by nikarg on 07.06.2026 at 10:26

Reading the review while listening to the album, I get why and where Radu struggles to thoroughly enjoy it and why he compares it to demos. I think the album is meant to immerse you and it is written and produced in such a way. A big plus for me is the concept and the narrative; I enjoyed it a lot more when I listened through headphones and read the lyrics. The artwork and the logo are both very fitting in the general presentation.

All that said, I agree with Radu that, on musical perspective, I persisted with this mainly because it is Matt's album; but I am glad that I did. After the third listen, I started to really get into it, which says something about how we 'consume' music nowadays. There is so much out there that it is mostly a matter of luck to find something that urges you to replay it. This album has no obvious hooks, at least to my ears, which is a shame because many people may skip it due to this exact reason.

Overall, I think the vocals are improved, and I very much enjoy how the music jumps to different styles and sounds. In my opinion, "Oblivion" remains my favourite track, and the other songs feel like they are all leading to this final track. I also quite like "Futility II" and the grindcore touch of "Futility III" was a nice surprise. To me, the album gets repetitive at times, and I do think it would go very well with mushrooms or weed, although it might also give a very frightening or paranoid experience. I listened to it sober, all three times, so I still owe it another go under some kind of influence.

Thanks Nik, really appreciated reading this. I'm happy to hear that you warmed to it with repeated listens, and when listening through headphones. I might be hypercritical, but as someone who is often listening to music through substandard laptop speakers, I find myself noticing that doing so with this album has a major negative impact upon the audio quality compared with listening through proper equipment, in terms of elements in the mix I struggle to hear as well through my laptop speakers - it does make me appreciate how I'm listening to most albums for the first time in suboptimal fashion. I also totally resonate with the point that it is impossible to give the amount of listens necessary to start truly appreciating an album to most albums released just due to sheer quantity, and I wouldn't expect more than a few people to give this more than one playthrough if they weren't someone I knew personally.

I agree that Oblivion is the best song here; I chose it as the first song to record cos I didn't know I was going to do more than 1 initially, and I felt it was the best song I wrote from my pre-Vulgaris days. Futility II was a natural one to do when I decided to do a full album because it has the recurring motif that is called back to at the end of Oblivion, but it's also probably the song that I'm most proud of after Oblivion. Appreciate the comment about the vocals - I had a bit of a breakthrough during the Seat Of The Fire recording sessions (which were after I had tracked vocals for Oblivion) of how to do in studio what I do live, which I had struggled with up to that point (I found myself overly straining before then when trying to record vocals), although the improved quality on the songs recorded for this after Oblivion might also just be down to Jess levelling up his recording set-up. I am curious to learn what impact any influence has on the experience for you!

Just in case Mattclassia doesn't get to his accumulative flood of mail msgs from me... here is wut I said:

"Matt I think your solo album is obv stripped-down but it works for this record with a hypnotic pacing n enjoyable leads/progressions n basswork. I might even say I dig this over either Vulgaris effort, which both has gotten plenty of spins. keep it goin m8"

call me a simpleton/layman who is bedazzled by bells & whistles-festooned esoteric wizardry haphazardly assembled for the sake of itself. I will disabuse that notion at any time I am called-out for blindly praising self-indulgent 'novelties'... not that this effort even tries to touch such territory.

there's plenty of works that seem like they're goin nowhere/chasin their own tail to their repelling detriment. this did not feel that way to me - I was on board the whole time although I can see how this can trigger some 'songwriting 101' no-no wrist-slaps but it felt like I was seein track by track as an intriguing litany of statements that will freely adorn itself with whatever genre mix/inclusion it will take to emphasize these statements... as the vibe diverted into marginal parallels of itself rather than abandoning ship for another chapter of an encapsulated journey... anyweys

my only real gripe is that it felt anticlimactic at its terminus - but I've noticed most post-metal is like that...

\m/ would love to hear where you'd go with a follow-up sleighz!