BUY THESE DISCOUNTED RELEASES

Becoming the Archetype - The Physics of Fire

 

	RELEASED: May 8th, 2007 PRODUCER:Andres Magnusson LABEL:Solid State Records BAND: Jason Wisdom Alex Kenis Brent Duckett Seth Hecox
+ Killer musicianship, non-emo clean vox, still heavy - Songs run together at first, loose concept	TRACKS: 1.Epoch Of War 2. Immolation 3. Autopsy 4. The Great Fall 5. Nocturne 6. The Monolith 7. Construct And Collapse 8. Endure 9. Fire Made Flesh 10. Second Death 11. The Balance Of Eternity

OVERVIEW

Ok, so we all know there’s a ton of albums from serious metal heavyweights coming out this summer…Shadows Fall, Ozzy, Megadeth, Dream Theater, and about a billion other sick releases are slated to come out between May and September.  But this is easily my most anticipated record of the summer. Why?  Because BTA are one of the few bands today that can seamlessly blend melodeath and prog, odd time signatures with straight-up shredding, and catchy melodies with savage death vocals and pull it off easier than Chris Carrabba making yet another horde of girl-pants-wearing junior high boys cry through their mascara.

            There’s 2 bands that have clearly influenced this recording – fellow prog-deathsters Aletheian, and the mighty Swedish metal titan known as Extol.  This record absolutely smacks of a band that’s spent the last few years jamming to Extol’s “Undeceived” and “Burial”, and after losing 2 guitarists but picking up Aletheian axemaster Alex Kenis, it’s only logical to expect that he’d have a profound impact on BTA’s writing, and believe me, he does.  The keys and clean vocals are featured in just about every song to some degree, and any trace of ‘core the band showed on “Terminate Damnation” is jettisoned in favor of more complex, progressive melodies and riffing.  So does this top their out-of-nowhere 2005 blitzkrieg?  Read on….

SONGS

The Physics of Fire kicks off with Epoch of War, and the imposing intro quickly drops into straight-up death juxtaposed with melodic leads and a killer solo break – this song is definitely the pick of the record, as far as I’m concerned.  Immolation is kind of like a miniature version of Elegy from Terminate Damnation, and once again the clean vocals and newfound shred power combine to form another choice pick. Autopsy keeps things steamrolling right along with some of the best lyrics on the record, and The Great Fall features a slamming off-time break and yet more blistering axe work, which brings us to Nocturne, an instrumental that gradually crescendos from a solitary guitar and piano to a full band creating an ominous prelude to the latter half of the record. The Monolith kicks things right back into gear with titanic riffing and one of the cooler clean breaks on the record (think Extol on “Undeceived” or something), and Construct and Collapse is straight-up precision riffing.  Endure features some almost Norma Jean-ish parts and is probably the one that’ll appeal most to that crowd, Fire Made Flesh is yet another example of BTA seamlessly weaving more progressive, orchestral aspects into their sound, but the most introspective tracks are yet to come. Second Death and The Balance of Eternity both take awhile to spool up, but once they do, both tracks fire on all cylinders and BTA runs an absolute clinic on how to write a 6-9 minute song - if any new band has my vote for being able to tackle long songs, it’s these guys.

CONCLUSION

If it isn’t pathetically obvious already, I really dig a lot of the new stuff BTA brings to the table – Kenis’ influence is undeniably, and it’s made them much more of a multi-dimensional band.  As much as I loved “Terminate Damnation”, this is a COMPLETELY different animal, but it triumphs on it’s own terms.  My only real complaints would be that the latter half of the record tends to run together and that the concept isn’t entirely clear, except that they talk about fire in just about every song.  Even so, this comes highly recommended.

Review by Matt Rewinski

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All images, logos, and pictures are trademarks or registered trademarks of Saviours Of Rock or their respective owners, and are protected by copyright laws in the USA, Australia and other countries.  Except as required for normal use by a viewer of this web-site, nothing pertaining to this web-site or  its contents may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or  by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written consent of Saviours Of Rock or its respective owner.

Copyright ©2006 Saviours Of Rock TM. All Rights Reserved.