Not all the riffs mind you, many of them are right up my alley. Dissonant, engaging... they make strange turns and sound off. I love all that stuff and it's why I haven't thrown in the towel for the album completely yet. When the album hits, it does so well above average. The atmosphere is great, the keyboards are done well and are only in at pertinent times. It all should work...
That's only half the story though. Some of the riffs in the album sound like the the musicians playing random notes. It has a huge prog metal wankery to it that I can't get into. Maybe if they had another guitar to go with it to fill out the sound a bit it may work for me. As is though when they decide to go off on these rabbit holes playing whatever note they want on the fret board the album sounds hollow, lifeless, stale... it's just boring.
What is even more painful about this is they have the capability of following those sections up with incredibly powerful atmospheric sections... dissonant riffing that is truly creepy... really outside of those sections (and there are quite a few) the album is quite excellent.
There is so much potential in this album, but about a third of it sounds hollow and incomplete. If they decided to flesh out the prog sections with just a bit more atmosphere or even another guitar it would probably work for me... or at least be listenable until the stronger sections of the songs came in. As is though this one is really hard for me to truly enjoy all the way through. I'll shelf it and come back some time later to see if my thoughts have changed.
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