Better late than never, we review Allegaeon‘s new album. This is the seventh and it comes three years after the phenomenal Damnum. The enthusiastic review by Mr.Jingles can be read here. Metal Blade has the honor of firing this new masterpiece at us. I say masterpiece, we will of course have to wait and see. But given the extremely impressive discography, there is a good chance that it will be another one. As stated in the review of Damnum, Allegaeon brings death metal with a very high technical content. This is then mixed with a lot of melody and clean music pieces or clean vocals. Huh, damn. Clean vocals? Yes. Clean vocals. And that can turn out incredibly well if it is all balanced out and of course also well sung. A very good example is the Dutch band Orphanage who also knows how to mix clean vocals and grunts so skillfully. Here and there Allegaeon shows something similar.
Original band member and singer Ezra Haynes disappeared from the face of the earth in 2015, but now he is back and he has fully devoted himself to the lyrics. While the previous singer was no joke, Haynes perhaps performs his task even better and shows that he holds his own with different singing styles. Lyrically, all songs have a certain approach with death as a common denominator. These different perspectives on death are captured like bones collected in an ossuary that all tell their own story. The title of the album The Ossuary Lens is therefore a striking one.
And now finally what it’s all about: the music. The album has ten songs and lasts 44 minutes. In this time frame we are treated to an almost inexhaustible stream of musical ideas that sweeps us along as if we are participating in a ride of whitewater rafting of the highest difficulty level. That is not because the music is so chaotic but because no song is the same. This is special, because still it is always Allegaeon you hear. In addition, the band uses an adventurous writing style even more than before.
The album starts with still calmly meandering acoustic strumming in the intro track Refraction. Slowly building tension with almost classical sounding melodies it blasts through to Chaos Theory. Here the band shows its death metal side and the pace is good. You can also hear the ingenious technical guitar playing right through the brutality. The subtly soloing guitars halfway gently tickle your emotional world and you are unconsciously enchanted by the beautiful tones. Later on in the song you can slowly wake up again by the more firmly applied distortion on the guitars. Driftwood starts with an organ-like melody before moving on to a progressive sounding death metal section. Here we also hear the first clean vocals and it is obvious that Ezra Haynes can really sing. With a lot of melody and high notes he sings the chorus, after which he effortlessly switches to a low grunt. And what I said about that rafting, while the band uses clean vocals, this is one of the harder songs on the record. We go in all directions, wonderful contrast!
Carried by Delusion also starts off so maddeningly sensitive. Beautiful melodies herald the song and slowly it gets harder and harder. We mainly hear mid-tempo pounding death metal here, with measured melodic guitar lines and solos. Dark Matter Dynamics then surprises by cramming in an extensive acoustic blues intro. How cool! Then it changes into rasping death with grinding riffs and high dynamic leads. Not mentioned before, but the bass continuously plays a modest but certainly no less prominent role in the whole. And certainly in this song the bassist can put himself a bit more in the foreground. We introduce the end acoustically and then we end it with soloing and blasting. Great!
Flamenco guitars? Fine, let’s do it. Imperial is saturated with grinding and penetrating riffs and glorious melodies. The pounding rhythm section lays down an extremely solid foundation on which the string virtuosos can let themselves go completely. And the great thing is that this is not only technique-driven, but Allegaeon has also written an accessible song.
Allegaeon has written a fantastic album here and I am sure that this will be on many end-of-year lists. The return of Ezra Haynes has not done the band any harm and he shows what a class singer he ism while Allegaeon (again) shows that it is a class band. My advice: buy it!
Score:
86/100
Label:
Metal Blade Records, 2025
Tracklisting:
- Refraction
- Chaos Theory
- Driftwood
- Dies Irae
- The Swarm
- Carried by Delusion
- Dark Matter Dynamics
- Imperial
- Wake Circling Above
- Scythe
Line-up:
- Ezra Haynes – Vocals
- Greg Burgess – Guitar
- Michael Stancel – Guitar, vocals
- Brandon Michael – Bass guitar, vocals
- Jeff Saltzman – Drums
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