SILHOUETTES

"Silhouettes" is the 3rd full-length studio album by Dutch metal act Textures. The album was released through Listenable Records in April 2008. It's the successor to "Drawing Circles" from 2006 and features one lineup change since the predecessor as bassist Dennis Aarts has been replaced by Remko Tielemans.

Stylistically the material on "Silhouettes" continues the technical/progressive metal style of "Drawing Circles (2006)". Hard edged angular riffs and rhythms, often delivered in unconventional time signatures, shouting aggresive "core" tinged vocals, and the occasional clean vocal part, and some melodic and atmospheric moments, which are often enhanced by the use of keyboards. Artists like Meshuggah and Gojira come to mind at various points of the playing time, but Textures ultimately don't sound like those acts, although there definitely are some similarities.

"Silhouettes" features high level musicianship and a powerful, clear, and detailed sound production, which suits the material perfectly. The material is well written, effective, and catchy (even quite melodic at times). It's also reasonably varied and "Silhouettes" is overall an album with a good tracklist flow. So upon conclusion "Silhouettes" is a high quality release by Textures. There are a few issues which prevent it from reaching higher levels of excellence, and that is predominantly issues with the vocals. Both the raw shouting vocals and the clean vocals are as such well performed, but none of the vocal styles are particularly unique sounding. The raw vocals sound like a thousand other "core" tinged vocals, and the clean vocals are pretty unremarkable too.

So while the material are both well written and powerful, Textures still haven't found a sound which make them stand out from the crowd of similar sounding artists (like for example the two above mentioned artists have), and that does have an impact on my overall impression of "Silhouettes". Had the vocals stood out more and enhanced the uniqueness of the music and had the music overall had a more original sound, the sheer quality of the product would have warranted a sure 4 star (80%) rating, but as that unique sound is lacking I feel like I'm stretching, when I a rate the album with a 3.5 star (70%) star rating.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives)