Cokegoat: " Vessel"

With three voices screaming over the rolling poly- morph of riffs to creates a Mastodon like feel. It's too up beat for me to really call this sludge as the riffs are sharp and jagged with a straight up metal attack.It roars to life in this pre-Blood Mountain mode of attack though more grindcore than sludge until the riffs settle into a slower groove with keyboards causing the song to float a little midway through.

I have always though if you want to play like Led Zeppelin then listen to more Robert Johnson than you do Jimmy Page, and these kids are well polished on their Neurosis. "Buried in the City" find them wielding big clunky doom riffs more like High on Fire, the vocal layering is more Neurosis, and it's a moderately cool, riff , but the rule around here is cool riffs alone do not make a song.

They are good, players, the drummers leads the pack here, which is similar to Mastodon, and their bass player might even be better than Troy, but the riffs are not as original .The melodies when the appear aren't really hooky, though on what might be the chorus to dogs, things congeal well. It builds in a very similar manner to what Neurosis might do in the Through Silver and Blood era. They do take the occasional jammy wander to let the songs breath returning to the chant of the chorus.

The keyboards don't really come out of the closest to make their presence known until, "End of Your Life part 1" the riffs get bigger and make for a more monstrous gallop. The second part of this song is thundering but in  much more deliberate manner and almost like a half time reprises of the first part."Fly by Night 2" is no a sequel to the Rush song. It hammers into the song with some great drumming but no clear motive but to pound you. The more grind core side is abandoned fora slower more melodious metal riff, and I'm sure their are some people who might find this to be genius, but it sounds like something I have already heard. The first passing listen to this album I found entertaining, but really sitting down to listen to it makes me underwhelmed.

If these guys paid more attention to melody, they would be better songs writers, the keyboardist, sings on "Fly by Daylight"  and her voice gives it a more Kylesa feel and its one of the albums better songs. The riff hit harder when they are more thought out rather than blind swinging for the fences. By the time we get to " Glorious Dead" their hasn't been enough to convince me that this deserves to take up the space on my iPod. The chug they close things out with is more Electric Wizard, and they continue to jam around and look for ways to riff out of this. Well recorded and well played , but more fodder for teenagers who like a sound no matter how derivative it might be, I'll give it a 6.