THEMATA

Then the title track of this album, Themata, kept coming up on one of my Pandora stations, I enjoyed the song enough that I went looking for the album. When I received the album, I found that the exotic flavor of this song was not indicative of the whole, or even very much of the album. Only Synops has a similar feel, and it is nowhere near as good a song.

Most of this album is alternative metal, with wailing, slightly whiny vocals that make most alternative pretty much unlistenable to me. There are some proggy moments, mostly in the rhythms, and the guitarists on this album are both adequate. But despite the rhythmic interplay, the songs throughout the album just don't hold my interest.

2.5 stars

Despite Karnivool playing a large part in the Australian prog scene, this album more resembles that of an alt metal one. The guitar riffs are mostly simple, the vocals are quite standard for alt metal, and the production is crystal clear in such a way that really highlights the more standard rock sound of them. However, there is still definitely some proggier elements to the band, especially in terms of the rhythm section, which definitely brings some interesting things to the table at times.

There are only 4 songs on the album which I consider to be of very high quality, 'Cote', 'Themata', 'Roquefort' and 'Mauseum'. with the rest serving as decent tracks, but nothing particularly special. 'Cote' is quite a beautiful opener with good riffs and fairly good, emotional vocals, overall opening the album in an adequate way. 'Themata' definitely picks things up immensely, with a much more dynamic song with a lot of powerful behind it. I love how the keyboards has a slight Egyptian/Middle Eastern sound to it, and I also find the drumming to be really great, becoming more energetic as the song progresses, constantly raising the impact of the incredible chorus. 'Roquefort' is without question the best song this album has to offer, starting off with a killer intro riff that plays around with rhythm and time signatures quite a lot, along with being extremely fun and groovy. Making things even better is the great vocal performance, being more loose, but having a certain playfulness to it that sounds great. 'Mauseum' is mostly a great song due to the riffs, which have a slight djent edge to them that really has it stand out, along with some entertaining rhythm sections.

Unfortunately, I find the rest of the album to be nothing particularly special, with many songs sounding very similar to one another, often somewhat repetitive in nature. These songs tend to be good, bug simply nothing particularly great. There are a couple of songs that sound quite poor though, one being 'Life Like' which at points sounds like a filler song by 'Disturbed' and is just generally boring.

This is an album composed of peaks and valleys, with a couple of chasms strewn throughout. The peaks are all extremely good songs that are catchy and fun while also having some really great technical elements, and the valleys are mostly decent. The really low points on the album are quite cheesy, bland and generally awful, but overall, the album is serviceable. 'Karnivool' definitely went on to improve with their next album, 'Sound Awake' which had much better compositions with more variety and a much more interesting, proggy sound all around, but this album is fairly average in many parts.

Best Songs: Themata, Roquefort, Mauseum

Weakest Songs: Life Like, Sewn and Silent, Change (Part 1)

Verdict: Definitely a must for any fans of alt metal, but other than that, I don't think that this is a must listen by any means, other than the songs I've listed as best on the album, as the rest is quite samey. The rhythm sections are quite interesting, but it doesn't stop this from being an album with some large flaws in places.