It has been nine years since the release of their fourth album, ‘Disconnect’, and there have been a few changes since then as while long-standing members vocalist Jon Howard and guitarist Travis Montgomery (ex-Jeff Loomis) have stayed the course, bassist Pat Kavanagh who played on that album left for five years before returning, drummer Joey Muha has returned having missed out on that one, and they now have a new second guitarist in Oswin Wong (who plays with Howard in Canadian metal supergroup Imonolith). Their music is described as Melodic/Technical Thrash/Groove/Death Metal/Metalcore which in itself covers a multitude of sins while if I was to give it just one sub genre. I would call them deathcore, but they do also have tendencies towards djent and mathcore so as one can see, there is a lot going on.
There is a lot going on, and I wonder just how this all plays out in concert as they must be much heavier than they appear here which has a great deal of polis and commerciality over the top of it all. The result is something which I can certainly see bothering the charts and be critically acclaimed (after all, their debut ‘Under Reprisal’ won Canadian Recording Of The Year Award at Hamilton Music Awards and their last three albums have all been on the Billboard charts), but to my ears this has been messed with just too much. It is on the wrong side of clever production, and more of a band who in concert are going to be a very different proposition altogether, and they are the group I would much rather here, not one which has had a lot of studio treatment. There will be plenty of people out there who will rave over this, but a music review will always reflect personal taste and this one is not for me.
Rating: 7/10
Links:
https://www.facebook.com/threatsignal/
https://agoniarecords.com/