DOPPELGÄNGER

This was my introduction to this band, and I had to pick my jaw up off the floor several times when listening to it. The Fall of Troy really made a huge jump from their debut release to this. The songwriting is significantly more mature, the production quality has been significantly improved, especially on the songs that were remastered from the band's debut, and the songs all have a much-need boost in power and energy to them. Guitarist and lead vocalist Thomas Erak's vocals go from normal singing to a few really off-the-wall post-hardcore shouts and screams. I think his voice is much more powerful on this album, but at the same time more restrained. In fact, that's an element of the music that really shows here. Unlike their debut, The Fall of Troy really does tune it done occasionally tempo-wise, as we do get a fair amount of slower sections, many of which may be subjected to acoustics and noise in the vein of early The Mars Volta albums (De-loused and Frances come to mind more than once). Despite the maturity of this release, technicality and polyrhythms galore are still a major factor in this music. But the technicality feels like it has much more of a purpose here. The band isn't just playing fast riffs for the sake of playing fast.

I've been flipping over in my mind whether I should give this 4 or 5 stars and I seem to change my mind about it almost constantly. But in the end, I really have no complaints about it, which means I can happily give it a 5 star rating. Fans of The Mars Volta or modern heavy prog owe it to themselves to check The Fall of Troy out.