ALL WE DESTROY

Grayceon's new album "All We Destroy", while bringing a relatively fresh approach to the concept of progressive metal, ends up quickly becoming stale and repetitive, with many of their more creative choices of direction being essentially reduced to gimmickry. It becomes clear quickly why much of the instrumental focus is directed toward Jackie Gratz's electric cello, as the guitar and drum work ultimately plays out to a series of ineffective and repetitious riffage, which becomes painfully apparent on the sprawling seventeen-minute track "We Can", which would have been far more suited to being a composition closer to the six-minute mark, carrying fewer truly engaging musical ideas than most, if not all, of the other tracks on the album.

That's not to say that the album is a total loss, however. Jackie's vocals are, on balance, quite good (although, sadly, somewhat limited in their use, as the band focuses more on instrumentation), and the two songs bookending "We Can", "Shellmounds" and "Once A Shadow" are surprisingly strong efforts that make you realize how much talent the project has, and yet how little of it seemed to be used on the rest of the album.

Overall, the end result felt more like a glorified solo album than a cohesive effort between musicians, but yet at the same time makes me curious to see what else this band may have up their sleeves in the future. I'd consider this album a strong pass for all but fans of cello metal, but still put these guys down as a band to watch for in the future.