6th Place: Evermind – Of Beings Long Gone1. Dreaming Madmen – Your PossessorFirst Impressions:Nice. I’ll be honest this is the EP I’m most worried about because two of these are artists I’ve heard and am not a fan of and the rest I have to assume are going to be in a similar vein because of that. Anyways you called this a Steven Wilson track and yeah I guess kind of, it doesn’t really have the same “sound” as a SW song to me but it does have some of the same melancholic vibe to it. I think it’s a’ight. I’m wondering how likely it is for me to form a strong opinion on it though.
Final Thoughts:I think this entire EP has kind of suffered from a case of “none of the songs are particularly memorable” and thus I kind of end up forgetting how most of this one sounds. I don’t really know what to do about that because it puts me in a tricky place when doing these write-ups ‘cause… I’m not quite sure what to say about this one going into it.
Well, I guess. The overall vibe of this one is pretty nice. Because, yes, it does have the general vibe of a SW song, in that it’s kind of gloomy and focused more on an atmospheric sound than it is focused on instrumental melodic hooks. The vocals are… fine, the singer has a very shaky voice that fits in with the style well enough though I don’t think he’s selling any one emotion that strongly, or even subtly.
I think from the moment of the pretty good guitar solo onwards the song improves a fair bit though – there’s more swell to the instrumentation, the vocal melody on the “you are mine and I am yours” bit is a bit more memorable & the addition of the female vocalist here (who has a lot more presence than the male vocalist) helps a lot too. The instrumental interplay that follows is also a nice bit, especially the bass here.
It still isn’t a song that resonates with me particularly strongly, but I do like it, it does register in my mind as a “good song” though it doesn’t come close to any of the best PT or SW tracks at all, mostly for a general lack of any real flavor. It’s kind of flavorless, I think that’s just the biggest issue. And if you’re gonna be flavorless, if you at least do it really well then sure, go ahead, there’s a few tracks in this round that went that route to great success, but this song just doesn’t seem to be able to commit to doing anything especially effectively. It’s not bad, I like it, but I don’t come close to loving it.
Reward:
2. Voices From the Fuselage – Life on TitanFirst Impressions:I’ve definitely heard this one before because I listened to the first half of this album before calling it “one of the most boring and emotionally sterile albums I’d heard in a long time” or something like that. Which maybe I was being a bit mean when I said because this sounds. Fine. I don’t really hear any sort of personality from it, for one. It’s what djent-prog sounds like in a post-Altered State world, an album whose legacy only gets more frustrating with time, but ehh. The vocals are fine and the clean parts are solid enough I suppose but the heavy riffing just doesn’t do anything at all for me here.
Final Thoughts:The existence of this band and this song sends me on an existential crisis in terms of progressive metal, wondering if the djent and atmospheric influences of tesseract are going to eventually drown the genre in a featureless haze of blue-pink sameyness without any bands having any unique flavor, or any sense of actual progressiveness. There’s definitely nothing progressive about this song, for one. Everything about it is so safe and sterile and gutless and even kind of cliché. And more and more bands keep sounding like this. Less and less bands doing actually interesting things, or if there are any bands doing those interesting things, they either 1. get bored of metal ALA Opeth, Leprous, or 2. end up homogenizing over time ALA Haken, Caligula’s Horse.
Anyways the song itself. It’s fine. It’s incredibly average. Ashe is a fine enough singer though he doesn’t sound like he’s particularly interested in this song but he still at least sells these melodies well enough. The bassy, rhythmic groove in a 6/8 pattern for most of the song works well enough. The chorus does have some swell to it. The heavy riff bit sounds kind of bad due to 1. a weirdly crispy guitar tone and 2. some super fake sounding strings trying to and failing to add bombast and yet it still kind of works anyways? The riff itself is solid, I guess, but the sound of it isn’t doing it any favors.
The song doesn’t really have much in the way of technicality to impress and the emotive bits don’t hit as hard as they really should but it’s. Ehh. It’s fine. I’ve heard less interesting songs in this round, or songs that evoke even fewer emotions in me than this by-the-numbers djent-prog track whose biggest crime is being inoffensive and lacking in any real flavor. I like it more than everything I’ve rated a 1 up to this point, at least, but that’s about the most concession I can give in this one’s favor.
Reward:
3. Wolverine – Communication LostFirst Impressions:Possibly the biggest risk here considering I very strongly meh’d two songs from them in my last roulette all of like, 7 or 8 months ago. All of these off the same album too. I don’t particularly remember either of those songs that well but this one is at least kinda working for me? The chorus(?) in particular has some nice power behind it & the overall sound of this feels a lot more full than the dreariness I remember from them before. Yeah this goes on a bit maybe but for one it’s got an interesting 7/8 rhythm throughout most of it, decent heaviness, decent power, I’m liking it.
Final Thoughts:It’s surprising that this is, without any real competition, my favorite track on this EP, honestly. Considering that what I’ve heard from this band prior was all at best “okay” this is a surprisingly competent and complex slice of prog metal – and like, actually progressive metal instead of the gloomy katatonia-like sound I recall their other stuff having. Well, okay, it’s not wildly flashy or particularly unique all the same but it’s more rhythmically and instrumentally interesting.
For one, the chorus of this one is the one single thing about this EP I always remember before going into it. The vocal melody is pretty strong & the singer sells it well, the instruments have some real power to them to back up the swell of the chorus, it all clicks together well. And that’s not to say the rest of the song doesn’t work either – there’s a lot of small shifts in the instrumentation and some quieter moments to give the listener room to breathe, the song never goes wild but it doesn’t get boring either, it sustains a pretty lengthy runtime.
The fact that it does kind of play it safe is I think the thing that keeps me from fully loving it, though. Aside from the chorus a lot of this does feel more clinical than it does hard-hitting – the rest of the song is rarely metal at all, more darker prog rock, and while some of the instrumental moments can be nice + there’s a good interweaving of vocals and solos in the middle sections of the song, none of it resonates as strongly with me either. I guess what I’d say is that I like this one but I’m not fully sold on it or the band even still. Ehh.
Reward:
4. Frequency Drift – NineFirst Impressions:Eehh I dunno this one is just not doing it for me. It feels melancholic but in the “not actually going to do anything with that melancholy” sort of way, it’s just… nice-sounding but not that emotional, at least for me. The quiet bit in the middle with the strings & twinkly bells(?) is a kinda neat moment though.
Final Thoughts:The start of this one is… weird and feels kind of disconnected from the rest of the song too. It’s a bit upbeat with some, like marimba or something and faster-paced drumming, but then the vocals hit and the song pretty much lingers in a slower pace for the rest of its runtime after that? And anyways, this song lives and dies by its vocals, which, honestly, I’m not super impressed by. She’s a very technically strong singer but I do not get a ton of emotion coming off her voice. She’s got a very dry tone to her vocals. I don’t know how else to describe it. Reminds me of Anneke to an extent, though she doesn’t sound as breathy.
I guess the aforementioned middle bit I called out (and the ending as well) does pick up a bit more groove to it though, sort of. I honestly totally forgot this part of the song existed as so much of it is dominated by the gloomy vocal bits. There’s like, some kind of buildup that happens here but it doesn’t… lead to anything, the song just treats that build as its climax.
I don’t know what to say, this one is frustrating but also mostly. Boring. I’m actually surprised at how boring it is, listening to it again. I really don’t have much positive to say about it, even the good aspects are undercut by never reaching their full potential or feeling disconnected from the rest of the song, and the main meat of the song fails to resonate with me due to the singer just not working for me here either. It’s not… awful? I’m not about to slap a zero on this because there are moments here I kind of like but I don’t think there’s enough here for me to feel comfortable giving this anything higher, which is, admittedly, lower than I initially expected to be giving this.
Reward:
5. Mother of Millions – ArtefactFirst Impressions:One more long one to close this out I suppose. I’m deep enough into this one now to wonder if it’s just going to straight-up be 10 minutes of ambient. Okay no there’s the piano. It’s still looking like a pretty mellow track overall though which is fine as a closer, so. There is kind of a slow, constant build to this at least, until it explodes into full gear right towards the end. Also valid. I think once it hits that peak it doesn’t really seem to have anywhere else to go after though.
Final Thoughts:This one’s hard to talk about because it’s such a slow burn. There’s like, absolutely nothing but vocals and light synth touches for the first three minutes. It’s a bit long of an intro for what’s already essentially an extended buildup. It’s not necessarily bad or unpleasant on its own but it does make me feel a bit impatient.
To be clear I can like songs that have a slow build and then explode at the end. Some songs in that vein are some of my favorite songs period. Comforting Sounds, The Frame (hell, any Oceansize closer), stuff like that springs to mind immediately but here’s the thing – the quiet parts of those – they’re so emotionally raw and delicate and just, friggin’ moving. The quiet parts of this are… nice, but they don’t exist to exist on their own, it feels like, they exist to build towards the loud part. And that’s about 7 minutes of slow, kind of uninteresting build to get to 3 minutes of payoff. Which, sure, that’s a decent chunk of payoff but I’d genuinely like the song more if it was just those last 3 or so minutes.
The climax itself is… pretty solid. There’s some oomph to the drums, a roaring tremolo guitar melody driving the intensity with the vocals mirroring it for a pretty cool effect, a lot of layers of sound coalescing to a pretty rich and compelling sonic landscape, but just one sonic landscape, that doesn’t really develop or change over the course of the build. Which, like, you’d think there’d at least be some escalation still, past that point? I don’t feel like we get that here. The way the song does wind down at the end does work to finish things off though pretty well.
In the end I feel pretty neutral towards this one too. I don’t dislike it, I don’t love it, I kind of like some of it, but that’s about the best I can do. To be clear I don’t think the buildup section is necessarily boring, there’s at least a slow build going on at all times but I also don’t see the reason it needed to be as long or as dry as it is, and even then the payoff isn’t quite good enough to warrant it either. It’s… a bit of a mess, I guess. I get what they’re going for and some of it works but they definitely don’t stick the landing.
Reward:
Overall EP Thoughts:First Impressions:Well-structured overall and with a nice build alongside a mostly consistent sound. I’m not sure if it’s a sound that’s ever really going to do that excellent with me, and I’ll admit I sort of found it difficult to focus on some of the longer tracks as they went on, but I didn’t really actively dislike anything here at least. It could grow on me too, if I listen to it in a better condition or frame of mind, so. It’ll probably get high marks on the EP score in the end regardless even if the songs don’t do stellar.
This has a sound I’m never super enthused on but some of these cuts do that sound better than most tend to & it’s pretty cohesive but still diverse enough to not get boring as well.Final Thoughts:It’s cohesive, it’s structured well, it flows well, but god if this one doesn’t just bore me. Like, sorry, man, but this EP was the one I was always dreading to revisit the most because it’s just this dirge of gloomy melancholy without ever hitting any particularly strong high points and without that much sonic diversity overall either. Most of the songs are at least pretty dynamic within themselves, having some soft points and some loud points, but most of them execute that in the same way, namely having a quiet build to a loud moment and then easing off to have another build, or just having one, long, drawn-out build across the entire runtime. None of the songs save the Wolverine one and like, one melody in the Dreaming Madmen song stick with me much, either. This is more a rant about this EP than anything unfortunately but I don’t have much to say about the other categories I rate this on, the variety and general sound of this are just such a consistent “ehh” for me that rating it any higher than this feels wrong. I do at least appreciate the attempt at a concept here, if nothing else, even if it’s lacking the details and feels unfinished like you said.
EP Score Reward:
Total: 14/30Song Rankings:1.
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5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
Wolverine – Communication Lost12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
Dreaming Madmen – Your Possessor21.
22.
Mother of Millions – Artefact23.
24.
25.
Voices From the Fuselage – Life on Titan26.
27.
28.
Frequency Drift – Nine29.
30.
Key:
Bolsters –
Puppies –
Elite –
ariich –
Evermind –
Dacul