ENGULF

I'm going to be upfront and frank: Engulf is one seriously hot mess of of an album and is nearly impossible to get through in its entirety. While I can certainly appreciate and, to a large extent, forgive the inevitable shortfalls of a record released by a self-produced one-man-show like Frequency Eater, this is a record that fails at almost every level of the process with few opportunities provided for the listener to evaluate the artist favorably.

The album kicks off reasonably enough with some psych-ambient intrigue to initially set the listener's expectations high. Unfortunately these expectations are brought crashing back down as the album progresses and churns messy and unfocused tune after messy and unfocused tune. The music is largely characterized by Animals as Leaders-like guitar licks interspersed with or accompanied by post-metal ambience backing elements. But alas Owen, the gentleman behind Frequency Eater, is no Tosin Abassi. The guitar tapping passages are sloppy and, at least partly thanks to the poor production, the highly technical heavy riffs are sound like a muddled mess.

For most of the record, the drums and guitar appear to be in some kind of competition over which element can be more over the top and out of sync with whatever vibe or musical idea currently being explored. I wish I could say this was merely an example of a talented artist not understanding how "less can be more." No, there is something more fundamentally broken in this artist's understanding of how to express ideas musically. The artist simply tightening his playing chops is unlikely to fix it.

I will end the review with one positive observation. There are definitely worthwhile musical compositions and ideas buried within the noise of this record, which is more than I can say for many of the more polished but entirely sterile instrumental modern metal acts. Perhaps under the guidance of an experienced producer coupled with the input of additional band members, some of those ideas could be salvaged and restored. But in their current form, I can't quite recommend them to anyone.