From Exile -Monolith

Atlanta Band From Exile, you may have heard of via Metal Sucks , as they have connections to Daath, me i have seen there name around but , to be honest most local bands in Atlanta don't have alot of personality to their music , i'm sure this is the case in any town and what separates most bands from the pros , that and hard work , persistence, marketing smarts , money etc ...
so i was surprised when they caught my ear, while they recently put out and album of nine inch nails covers featuring emil wrestler , from what i heard of it didn't really do much for me , so i am going to review Monolith, last years release
They fall into progressive metal in a similar sense that more recent Mastodon does, the chops are a little in the department of an aspiring Dream Theater, where Mastodon is prog by way of Neurosis .
They aren't by any means as heavy as Mastodon, but their songs flow seamless together with a little more ease, Listening to their cd on my Ipod straight through the first three songs seem to be one, the guitar is the stand out throughout , the bass is way down in the mix i have to really open my ear to search for it .
Exhumed stands out as it get heavier here , the vocals come in as well, the are clean and heavily effected , they get props for being original , Porcupine Tree or Newer Ulver is the only comparisons that come to mind. The keyboards are more present in the mix than the bass helping to float into the fifth songs Veritas.
The common theme i find myself returning to while listening , is how fluid every thing moves from one change to another , the arrangements are really their strong point as the music is melodic , it is not hooky, but is like a musical stream floating by me easy listening for metal heads perhaps .
I want to check these guys out live imagine from this album there might be a more jam bandy feel. The guitar harmonies are strong, not as acrobatic as Iron Maiden but once again fluid around each other, the sound is full yet there is alot of room.
If i had any complaint its more of an energetic or esoteric one. The music feels very bright , sure they have a skull on the cover but thats about as creepy as it get , even on the slower almost doomy break, in their heart of hearts this is not the emotional catharsis you get from most metal , there hearts aren't in the heavy, the energy i get from these guys is not that they have had a hard road and done alot of drugs , but that could be said of alot of bands in this genre. If they were and alignment in dungeons and dragons they would be lawful neutral where most metal i listen to is chaotic evil, would say king diamond and ghost would be lawful evil. but alignment aside, this album flows easily to my ears and is more ambitious than most atlanta metal, now if they got hooked on drugs or black magic they might really be onto something but perhaps they are just young and pure of heart . when it comes to metal in the long run i would fault them for that. So i see them perhaps evolving into something else, but in this stage they are worth checking out if you like easy shredding.