METRONOMICON

9 creations filled to the brim with quirky riff patterns are served here, with short, pacy highly technical bursts as well as slow, brutal, meandering riff barrages. The bass is often given the role of providing momentum, and adds some jazz touches to the proceedings at times, and the drummer serves up some excellent rhythms as well.

It's the additional details that are most interesting here though. Atmospheric, low key opening sequences. Interludes with mellow, wandering undistorted guitars. Dreamy passages with synth textures and solo guitars. Even a violin and cello theme is inserted in the final track End of Path.

The sparsely but effective use oif synths and keyboards to add textures and enhance moods in some of the metal segements is an additional nice feature here, and even the blend of aggressive metal and trance in Youth actually works pretty well - although in that case the trance sequences comes across as far more interesting than the metal ones. Neat contrast though.

Recommended to those who like or are intrigued by instrumental, quirky and shifting progressive metal with technical and extreme embellishments.