FOCUS

This album is kind of funny. On one hand, you have the great rhythm section of Malone and Reinert trying to make a nice respectable jazzy album, kind of like they'd do on Cortlandt, Gordian Knot and Emergent. They do a great job too. If you just took the recorded tracks the two of them made for this, you'd have something nice to listen to.

On the other hand, the other three band members only seem interested in making a completely mundane death metal album. Admittedly, I'm not a fan of death metal vocals, but I'm alright with them when they're done well (see Åkerfeldt, Mikael). This is not one of the cases where the vocals are done well. They are ugly across the board. The guitarists have occasional nice flourishes, but for the most part it's just noise.

Going back to the first paragraph, if you just took what Reinert and Malone did, it'd sound good. Maybe add a guitarist who knew what they were doing or just have Malone throw in some stick playing and you'd have a much better album. But as it stands, it's average at best: three stars.