This album is full of hammering songs like "Fathom Infinite Depth," "The Plague of Am," and "Lucid Collective Somnambulation." These tracks are on fire, alternating between clean and distorted guitar and showing similar songwriting techniques as their first album. The stop-and-go technique is used a lot by tech death bands such as Archspire because they see it as a fit transition between riffs or parts of a song. I think it works well for Archspire (on this album), although many people do not enjoy it as much. Despite it being a large part of their first album as well, Archspire actually make this technique work this time around. It's like Necrophagist and Gorod had a child but dropped the progressive elements off their music. [1]
If you've heard even one Archspire song, it's no debate that they're talented musicians. I don't think I need to argue that. But where this band drops the ball is in their songwriting. Sweep picking is almost omnipresent when it comes to this band. Sometimes it can be cool, such as in Lucid or Rapid Elemental Dissolve. But Dean Lamb and Tobi Morelli just seem to abuse it. I can hear really cool riffs, such as in their title track Archspire. It's clear that these guys are capable of good songwriting. But then at the end of Archspire, guess what happens? Nothing more than a sweeping solo. So when it comes to guitars: Lamb and Morelli have got some good riffs, and they're great players, but they really need to lay off the sweep picking. I'm hopeful that their next album will be better in this aspect. [2]
The riffs on here give old school as well as modern vibes. The modern riffs are more noticeable, but the old school riffs are hidden by the clean production. The riffs I speak of are the groovy ones that can be seen in "Fathom Infinite Death" or "Kairos Chamber." They give Archspire a different outlet other than fast and relentless all the damn time. That was another problem with "All Shall Align": every song was fast and never slowed down except for a few clean guitar breakdowns. This album, on the other hand, is able to slow down without taking away from Archspire's original style of "fast and relentless." [1]
As for the band members, each member does their part perfectly at every second. The drums are fierce and have perfect precision. The guitars are the same and so is the bass. The real reason for this paragraph is the vocalist. Wow, the vocalist kills it. In order to keep up with the fast pace of the music, he basically raps everything in a very dry almost Cynic-like growl that really fits the clean sound of the overall compositions. [1]
So as far as production goes, I mentioned in the part one of this review that Archspire relies on good production to make them sound good. This is because there are so many things going on in their music like a million notes being played per minute or multi-layered music. Because it's all so fast, good production is needed in order to actually hear everything, and Archspire have it on this album. [1]
Tracks
- Lucid Collective Somnambulation
- Scream Feeding
- The Plague of Am (Cogito Ergo Sum)
- Fathom Infinite Depth
- Join Us Beyond
- Seven Crowns and the Oblivion Chain
- Kairos Chamber
- Spontaneous Generation
If you like it, please buy it on their official website/merchandise.
Archspire - The Lucid Collective (2014)
Source [1] [2]
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