Taken By the Sun: s/t

We break away from Black Metal History month for some doom/gaze, at least that is what they have led me to believe ,but it chugs in more like hardcore . They flip back and forth from the clean post- rock guitar sound, but are punchier and more energetic than doom and are not rough enough around the edges to be sludge. I'm a little surprised that my homies over at Cvlt Nation have gotten so excited over this but didn't want to give Primordial any love , as these guys have taken many more trips to the mall than Primordial. I am not hearing anything doom or shoe gaze about this. They throw some Mudvayne like prog bouncing into the second song. They are tight, but too testosterone fueled.

"Fuse" is a little more thoughtful, but even calling this post rock is a wild exaggeration. It sounds like the might have been listening to early Mastodon more than Mogwai.The clean vocals begin to sound kinda like Brand New. The speed up in section of the muscular mathematics of "Red". These guys are clever song writers and are not just recycling tire old metal riffs. At the three minute mark they take one of their more thoughtful laid back guitar breaks, but I doubt this is really going to sway the album. This is not djent, but it gets across the same vibe Meshuggah has in some of their angular acrobatics.  They do get to Neurosis by way of Mastodon on "Detached"."Volatile" doesn't do anything to change the course this album is headed on, in fact it engages in even more guitar heroics.

The Chicago bashers bring things to a head with "Ornaflux". Like most of the songs it's sung/ screamed in a husky bellow. The guitar keeps shredding from riffs to riff, some of these are pretty clever . This really didn't do much for me. I already own Mastodon's albums and Neurosis' for that matter, the more mall metal parts are to bro'ed out for me. I'll give this a 7, if you like more mainstream metal then go ahead and around it up a point as it's well played and well produced. The vocals become a little boring after awhile and this is an area they should experiment more with , but for a debut it's decent enough.