I gotta say, listening through ÆPOCH's debut record, I was so tired I'm surprised I could listen finish it. But even that one tiny bit of consciousness I had left told me that I didn't have high expectations for this one. Did it exceed them? If so, by how much? Continue reading for the answer...

The only Prog Death band I listen to is OPETH, so they were the ones I tried to compare them to at first, but I soon found out that these guys sound nothing like that. This kind of Prog Death feels like Tech Death with more focus on melody and careful songwriting. Speaking of that, the LP is packed with tasteful and sophisticated songwriting, all-powerful heaviness and, in some compositions, displays the members' great sense of melody. I was kind of blown away by this album, to tell the truth, I expected another generic DM record, but no, this is some high-quality stuff.

One of my favourite things was when the songs were lead into these little bass sections where they turned it up to be as loud as (if not louder than) the guitars, and the bass actually took the lead. I'm sure that's something hard to pull of, but they managed to make it pretty interesting in the end. And even when the bass is in the background, it's still clearly audible. The fact that Bratt MacIntosh got enough respect as a bassist fills my heart with joy.

As for his vocal abilities, again, surprisingly good. There are a lot of instrumental parts on this thing, so it's not really vocal-driven, but when there are vocals, they are either low gutturals (but still with a lot more power than most DM vocalists) or high shrieks, and both are pretty awesome.

I... I don't know what else to say. This is definitely one you should look forward to.