Really looking forward to hearing this one! Their last record showed so much wonderful potential so I'm hoping I'll hear something more refined on this record.

I've been let down again by my expectations. Instrumentally, this is a masterpiece of an album - they know exactly what they're doing and it shows. What really surprised me was the fact that the clean vocals killed it. It has nothing to do whatsoever with the vocalist's capabilities or style - sure enough he manages to flip seamlessly between polar vocals styles and everything in between, just my sort of thing. What does brings this album down is the fact that the vocal melodies sound...off. There's a air of incompletion of senseless meandering. It's as if he was given a bag of notes appropriate to the key and he just pulled them out at random. Harsh vocals kick in, bam...incredible stuff. I've never said this before, but if there was an instrumental version of an album that I'd want, it would be this one.

I'd recommend anyone into extreme prog of any sort to check this out - you'll likely not be as picky as me

Written by LeKiwi on 21.11.2016 at 09:13

What really surprised me was the fact that the clean vocals killed it. It has nothing to do whatsoever with the vocalist's capabilities or style - sure enough he manages to flip seamlessly between polar vocals styles and everything in between, just my sort of thing. What does brings this album down is the fact that the vocal melodies sound...off. There's a air of incompletion of senseless meandering. It's as if he was given a bag of notes appropriate to the key and he just pulled them out at random. Harsh vocals kick in, bam...incredible stuff.

I guess I can understand what you're saying. The only reason I gave this album a 7 and not an 8 it's because of the vocals. The vocalist is so versatile and dynamic that it ends up not excelling at anything, with the cleans being his weakness. I guess they'd benefit a lot if Jenkins only focused on the growls/harsh vocals and someone else handled the cleans. Still, great album instrumentally speaking!

Written by Dark Forever on 21.11.2016 at 18:07

I guess I can understand what you're saying. The only reason I gave this album a 7 and not an 8 it's because of the vocals. The vocalist is so versatile and dynamic that it ends up not excelling at anything, with the cleans being his weakness. I guess they'd benefit a lot if Jenkins only focused on the growls/harsh vocals and someone else handled the cleans. Still, great album instrumentally speaking!

I thought I was the only one I still find his cleans executed very well, but I think he seems a little lost with everything that's going on in the background.

Kinda reminds me of a combo of Angra and Haken.

Written by EmeraldSword on 06.02.2017 at 22:51

Kinda reminds me of a combo of Angra and Haken.

Since you mentioned Angra, thought I'd put this here for you. Members of ASoG are in here

Thanks man, I checked em' out and they sound rad. Also followed them on IG. Cheers!