The first you notice about ZONER's newest album, "Auroralsonic Navigation" is it's no where near what you would think of as classically Metal. With this in mind, I decided to trust my musical and Metal knowledge while critiquing this awesomely strange album. Their music is personal and eclectic, full of influences from classic Rock'n'Roll, traditional Heavy Metal, and even Punk while keeping it clean and musically accessible. Their music seems to have no boundaries, and their sound can get really weird sometimes which shows int the more technical moments in many of their songs. One place where this is obvious is in the excellent bass guitar showed on "Unique", this technicality is shown in many other tracks, but in a more subtle way. ZONER is far from "traditional", so get prepared to have your opinions and convictions about Metal music tried! The sound quality is good, you can clearly understand what the band is playing and easily pick out each instrument. However, I did notice some tracks that really fall short in some parts, particularly the snare drum and the guitar parts which get drowned out by the rest of the instrumentation in some parts. The sound is good overall, but it could be far better than is presented here.

"Auroralsonic Navigation" has eight great tracks, the ones I consider the best in highlighting ZONER's sound and talent. The energetic "S.O.S. (Same Old Shit)"comes at you with guitars and unconventional vocals that seem jarring at first, but are easy to get used to. The track "Suited and Tied" is a strikingly fast song with a good, solid groove. "Back Into Metal" utilizes some guitar riffs that reminds me a lot earlier melodic Thrash Metal riffs but with more rhythmic variation. The track "Unique" is a great track for showcasing the rhythm section. And the heavy "Emptymess" has some really interesting and deep lyrics, that when listened to carefully show a great deal of irony in this track. "Auroralsonic Navigation" is an album with some strange elements, some errors to fix, but overall it's a surprisingly good album.