POLARS

I became aware of Textures about 6 months ago or so and, having heard a good deal of praise about them, decided to check them out. I heard comparisons to bands such as Meshuggah and Gojira and that excited me a great deal. This was my first exposure to the band and for awhile this was by far my least favorite of their 3 releases. However, it has grown on me over time.

Textures refers to themselves as avant-garde metal but except for fairly heavy use of synths, I don't see much that's avant-garde about the music. There are blast beats galore and the music is very technical. On first impressions I thought that Textures was simply another band trying to imitate some of the big names in tech/extreme metal. In reality, their music has a very unique and recognizable sound to it. The riffs tend to be very heavy and chugging but with melodic parts as well (some of which even have jazzy moments). The synths add some beauty to both aspects of the music as well. The vocals of Pieter Verpaalen sound like a mix of death metal with touches of hardcore punk to me and are probably going to be an acquired taste for most (he was replaced after this album by Eric Kalsbeek whose style is quite different).

I only have one complaint with this album. While the first 7 songs would qualify it as a 4 or 5 star album, the last song on the disc, "Heave", is a synth song that goes on for 14 1/2 minutes. While "Effluent" is also a synth song, it only lasts for a bit over 3 minutes and thus isn't long enough to wear out its welcome. I like electronic music, but hearing nothing but synth(s) going for 14 1/2 minutes wears on me very quickly. I normally skip the final track for that reason. Usually only one flawed song will warrant a 4 star rating from me, but given that this is a 56 minute album and the song in question takes up about a quarter of it, I'll have to lower my rating to a high 3 stars. I still recommend this album to fans of the bands I mentioned before, but the last song really should have been dramatically shortened.

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