BOSSK

So, their debut opens with the instrumental "The Reverie". It begins very quietly, just some soft guitar chords and synths. It gets a bit louder when the drums come in, but really it doesn't change much; just a very relaxing, calm piece of music. Only towards the end are you reminded this is a metal band at work: harsh, loud guitar and heavy drums end the track. Other than that, you wouldn't guess.

"The Reverie" flows seamlessly into "Heliopause", opening with similar heavy guitar/drums. The lyrics are screamed unintelligibly over the noise, almost confirming they are a thumping metal band rather than ambient rock. It's like this the whole way through, until it ends, and the next track succeeds it.

The next track being another instrumental - "Relancer". It is more similar to "The Reverie" in that the music is soft and relaxing, it steadily builds up, and there is very little change until five minutes through. Then it breaks down and a different riff is pursued, which also builds up, but much faster. Then it breaks down all over again, and the next song, "Kobe", continues the album.

"Kobe" is not much different in structure, relaxing up to about four minutes through when the drums start banging and the singer starts screaming. Hard to describe this song, but it's pretty fun, and the finale makes it my second favourite track on the album.

After the banging and crashing of "Kobe", "Atom Smasher" promises to continue the trend. Odd time signatures, experimental riffing, unpredictable stops/starts, growled vocals... you guessed, my number one favourite on the album.

"Atom Smasher" bangs on for a full eight minutes. The next track, "Nadir", is predictably quiet, opening with some lovely piano chords. No vocals, just a calm piano dominated ostinato. Drums come in at the end, but it is still not loud, calm to the end.

With "Nadir" ending, "The Reverie II" opens with a drum machine, soon followed up by soft guitar. It becomes much heavier at about two minutes through, and continues to build up until the end, containing a loud, uproarious finale.

For my conclusion, I present my personal two le grande requirements for a five star album:

1. The songs must all be excellent.

2. It must work brilliantly as an album.

Both of them are nearly met, yet both have imperfections. Not all the songs are excellent, some only mediocre, and this is because little change occurs in some of the songs, which makes it a bit boring. For requirement two, the album works in that all the songs flow into each other perfectly. It's just what I noted before - it's a bit boring after a while, and it might you fall asleep. The combined effect of this takes two stars off for me, otherwise it's a good album - very good, since I gave it an average rating and I'm not even a post metal fan.

So it's three stars. End of another review.

DEFINE's riff at the start reminds me a lot of something off of Cave-In's Antena album, it just has this solid almost stoner like groove before sounding like Explosions in the Sky and Mastodon having a jamming session, the second song TRUTH (the longer one) is somewhat different this time relying on beauty at the start before rearing its ugly head near the end for some amazing Cult Of Luna/Rosetta style screaming from the vocalist and also some nice clean vocals before climbing into the stratosphere never to be seen again.

Again i cant moan about the production qulaity as it is steller, giving every instrument a moment or two to shine;

Define - 7/10 Truth - 8/10

My Conclusion? Again no supprises, another solid proformance from this great young band, unfortunatly they broke up shortly before they could release the 3rd one so noone really knows if they could have bettered themselves or not, but eh, best not to think about that and just enjoy the music.

The production (for a young band releasing there first ep) is brilliant, whoever done the production managed to get the right mix of everying in which is always good, another cool bit about this album is its only 2 drawn out songs long, which brings me to the downside of this album, the songs do kinda drag on for a bit and really try like they wanna go somewhere, but most of the time dont and it drags it down a little, the last song in particular;

I - 7/10 II - 5/10

My Conclusion? I was quite happy with this album, its a very solid start for this band and a nice listen.