A DETERMINISM OF MORALITY

To be completely honest, I don't know how ROSETTA's Determinism of Morality made it onto this site. The majority of the album consists of horrible screaming over heavily distorted guitar playing roughly the same things over and over again. Besides the fact that, in my mind, it hardly qualifies as music, the only thing remotely progressive about it is the occasional use of an odd time signature. The few times I heard something sounding almost musical, it would just get repeated to death and then ruined by the noise of the rest of the album.

I would not recommend this album to anyone who likes pleasant melodies, interesting harmonies, or quality musical compositions.

In fact, I don't think I would recommend this album to anyone.

WARNING: This is not an album for closed minded people.

This is a metal album. It has influences from progressive music, but mostly is a metal album, with many hardcore traits, such as drumming, screaming/barking vocals and very few guitar solos, with a heavy emphasis on rhythm. So it shouldn't be compared to symphonic prog or neo-prog albuns, this is a completely different kind of music.

In what it is, and what it wants to be, this is an awesome album. Really good use of dynamics within every track, showing the light-dark contrast, which is sort of a genre trademark. If you're a post-metal fan, this is a must-have. If you want to hear really agressive music, at the same time strangely calming, give it a listen. But if you really doesn't like screaming vocals, stay away from this.

I always possessed a soft spot for bands with a sludgy sound such as Buried Inside ans ISIS but my first impression of Rosetta's new album left me a bit hanging. It was most likely being in a despicable mood and that ruined it for me. Nevertheless, after a few sessions I found that the slow rhythm of screaming and barking vocals were skillfully used to create a never-ending exploding rush of metal that denies you the option of pausing or stopping the album short of it's end. Be warned that DETERMINISM OF MORALITY can feel very repetitive and slow but it IS sludge after all, that is the charm it holds.

Surely this is my favorite album of the genre that came out this year, a fantastic effort that holds much strength and deserves a 4.5 rating which I will gladly bring to 5 stars.

This genre of "Prog" (quite wide description of Prog these days, so we have to get used to it - I don't object) is a weird beast. Screams and switching of rough/calm passages, that's what it is basically about. It can be taken crudely, or masterly polished, carefully combined. Sure, it has to be raw and somehow wild, but not untamed. This is piece of art done in half way between these two sharp ends. Yes, I've heard better before, but there are pieces (of songs) of interest as well, so this record isn't damned at all.

I don't consider myself narrow/close minded, but I'm not going to fall for anything with such elements and consider it "terrific" and "superb" instantly. I'm enthusiastic for the good stuff, but also suspicious of what I call "screams for screams themselves" => making noise because it's nice, not because it serves higher purpose of creating art.

Anyway, here the beauty of "tamed" version comes with latter half of the album, while first "part" serves as shocking (won't shock me, but those who are not prepared for such kind of music), while the music slowly distills (like a good old whiskey), until we get pure heaven, especially featured on Renew and title track, A Determinism of Morality, while the second one descends into the same screaming chaos from which the whole album emerged. Wonderfully scripted and I dare to say that this was possible the intended background "story" of this album. Or not ? Depends on which version you want to understand.

4(-), some good, some bad.