Believer - Transhuman

[Fire breath]

A few of you may care.

Tech death/thrash metal is out. Alternative ambitious melodic metal is in. What a change. Damn, all you tech death fans are gonna seriously get your knickers in a twist. The comeback album meant jack to me in the end. I was really surprised by this direction having not heard a sample beforehand, but I am somehow won over by this release. It has predominantly clean almost alternative sounding clean vocals with some screams on the odd line. The production is miles better than the last album. The riffing is solid, winding and good with melody and reasonably technical without blinding you with a million widdly notes. The tech needing brigade will cry into their beers at the lack of virtuosity but this is still way more cerebral than your average alterna band. You really have to open your minds with this. For me it's not a brilliant album but give it time to grow and once the initial shock wares off, you can see that they have somehow pulled it off.

 

[Orion Crystal Ice]

I think they just keep getting better, and actually consider 'Gabriel' my favorite album of theirs, so I know I'll be picking this up. I don't really 'require' a lot of elite this and that from whichever band, so the changes may throw me for a loop, but there is a good chance I will dig it in the end. Also, here is an obligatory remark about how I don't usually listen to "Christian bands", which isn't true, but I need to throw in just so I don't break the coming cycle.

 

[Orion Crystal Ice]

One more thing: Believer for ProgPower along with Grave Digger and Vanishing Point. Yay!

 

[ratanda]

Interesting. Had no idea they were putting out a new one. I'm especially curious given the original poster's comments.

 

[Orion Crystal Ice]

Supposedly, it comes out tomorrow, going to check the FYE here on Friday for that and the Cynthesis album (they stock some surprising metal at this particular one). In the meantime, anyone who hasn't checked out 'Gabriel', should definitely do so. One of those amazingly tasty, authentically progressive (read: not 'prog') releases. A lot of great songwriting and cool ideas there.

 

[ratanda]

This site has the first three tracks streaming: http://sputnikmusic.com/blog/?p=6401

It's alright. The first track definitely has that Believer signature sound.

 

[Orion Crystal Ice]

Wow, I'm addicted to the songs they put up. I don't think this is a bad direction so long as the songs stay winding how these are, exploratory..cerebral. Believer always has some rock solid songwriting. I like 'G.U.T.' the least, but that isn't a dislike. I want to get this album and just dive in.

 

[Rockbox1590]

Have they returned to religion inspired lyrics?

 

[Orion Crystal Ice]

If a writer has beliefs of any kind in any topic, it may likely inform their art, so I would probably say that they never really left those kind of lyrics too much, they probably just avoided a few 'buzzwords' to prevent upsetting all the tolerant and open-minded metal fans out there - who, coincidentally, never listen to lyrics. :Smokedev:

 

[Rockbox1590]

So is that a yes or a no? I love their first 3 albums in part due to the lyrical content.

 

[Orion Crystal Ice]

Well, I don't have it yet so I don't know, but I'll post some thoughts when I do (hopefully tomorrow). :hotjump:

 

[DEATHZILLA]

This disc is so bad, i almost wish i was deaf! Nothing on this disc is good, the worst disc of the year by a landslide. They should have stayed in retirement and spared the music world of this catastrophe.

 

[Dominick_7]

So is that a yes or a no? I love their first 3 albums in part due to the lyrical content.

Ditto. I loved Believers earlier cds, especially Dimensions, with a progressive feel and some lyrical influence from my favorite modern philosopher/apologist in there, besides the obvious source.


Liked the first track at sputnik. Thanks for posting about it guys.

 

[Orion Crystal Ice]

Well, I got to pick up the album..

The first thing I need to get out of the way is that the first track makes me feel as though I am in some kind of Vin Diesel blockbuster. Don't know that I would chalk that one up to their more successful experiments...

Beyond that....

There is a lot of direction and influence on here that started growing with 'Shut out the Sun' and 'The Brave' on the previous album - that is, more use of clean vocals in hooks. This will immediately make things sound more accessible, but Believer has always had great hooks...really, the only difference in these are that many of them are led by clean vocals. However, everything else is standard fare vocally. Songwriting wise, things are not as dark and menacing as on 'Gabriel' and the album seem to be progressive in a very neutral kind of way - the idea of 'mood' is a bit more abstract, that aspect will certainly please prog-heads (such as myself). The keys play a totally different role than on 'Gabriel', on here there are a lot of atmospheric, more expected 'proggy' patches, but if things are sounding too 'familiar' in a lot of areas, the structuring is also doing a lot of different things....so really, this is just, again, as this band always does, a whole different animal than anything else they've put out. Besides the bizarre action-flick soundtrack song, there is 'Multiverse' which is a fun ball of mid-paced tech thrash punctuated by only one short vocal line that acts as the repeated chorus. Then there is a really cool, short instrumental track which shows some electronic/trance influence, and there are also a couple of classic-styled Believer songs which are about as good as most of the rest of what they've done. So while this seems to be a kind of loose concept album (judging by the quotes inserted in the booklet, the album is focusing on human perception at different odds with ego, spiritually related physics, and et al), musically, there is a lot of variance and a lot of new ideas being played with - despite being tightly united by the production, the album sounds very 'free', and some of the songs on here I just love already.....in a nutshell, if one is only a fan of 'prog' metal, I would skip, but if you like 'progressive' metal as well, this seems to be a good one to get into. I'm still digesting it some, so...

oh, and finally, I'm not sure about the lyrics in a literal sense as they decided not to include them in the booklet (I hate when bands do this), so I'll wait for them to pop up online somewhere.