Pieces of Mankind

This album is one of the few cases that I found a strangely addictive listen the first time I got exposed to it, and after spending a few days listening to it I placed it in the catalogue/archive only to unearth it a few years later, and to find out that my fascination with these sounds had diminished with time for reasons I can’t put down in a logical, reasonable manner.

I got this effort from a friend from Greece who strongly recommended the band as “a rising force in the progressive thrash/death metal circuit”. He handed me their first two opuses which again I listened with a fair amount of attention for some time; the retrospection made at the beginning only refers to the album here, though: I still hold the sophomore pretty dear to my heart.

Yeah, a situation not identical to the one surrounding this interesting, charmingly flawed debut which tried to marry the intricate complex vistas of Nocturnus, Pestilence and Death with the prevalent dark gothic flair in the guys’ homeland in the mid/late-90’s as presented by their compatriots Rotting Christ’s and Nightfall’s exploits, only clad in a more thrash-fixated clout. A symbiosis which sounds captivating in theory, but in practice it falls short at times largely because the band have voted to keep both sides separated for at least half the time.

A decision which may work for some, especially in the first half where the more aggressive, and consequently more technical material resides, the jazzy staccato riffs of “While the End Is Coming” enrapturing the listener in their patently-woven, darkly atmospheric snare. Gorgeous melodic leads and sudden fast-paced nervy appreggios (“Reappearing Freedom”) make the setting even more appealing, not to mention the several keyboard-induced nuances that go straight into Sadist territory (think “Tribes”), with schizoid Coroner-esque rifforamas (“Reappearing Freedom”) rising literally out of the blue to a smattering effect.

Both Cynic and Atheist will listen humbled to the immaculate hectic shape-shifter that is “Our Shadows”, but before the fans decide whether this could be viewed the culmination of the whole showdown, cause it by all means sounds like something close to that, comes “Frozen Heart” and the album enters part two which is built around introspective, sombre gothic-tinged sounds with lengthy, multi-layered progressivers like “My Destination” trying to marry both sides later, but the steel intricate riffage can’t possibly stand out too much with pensive melancholic (“Liquid Heaven”) and laid-back exercises in purer progressive (“A-I”) taking the upper hand, making the idyllic acoustic ballad “The Mirror On The Top Of The World” a somewhat logical epitaph to this diverse, not very coherently stitched saga.

What I found quite appreciative initially was the more dispassionate, more technical side of this opus; the latter is still here, it hasn’t vanished mind you, but I have recently found the dark gothic side of this recording probing my aura more insistently, as though trying to show me that this is the one I should be paying more attention to. The thing is that the more attention I pay to it, the more I see no reason why this album should be so high on my list as again for at least half the time it reminds me of Rotting Christ’s “Dead Poem”, to give one example from the same time and country again, only more dynamically and less “poetically” executed. It sounds like the guys were firmly in the technical thrash/death camp at first, but then they went through a more or less profound change of heart and decided to not completely neglect the trends that rocked the metal boat in their homeland at the time. If experienced back then, especially on the first couple of listens, it would indelibly arouse some interest in the audience, but with more exposure to it one won’t help but notice the audible, to these ears intentionally carved boundary between the two styles, one that prevents the album from flowing really smoothly and naturally.

No boundaries of any kind on the standout sophomore which was a manifest indeed, of technical/progressive death (not so much thrash anymore) metal greatness, and although the “Balance of Power” EP showed the band in a fairly bright light eight years later, the next few instalments saw them looking at the drier, more sterile ways of expression, winking at the 90’s tools of the trade, but not in such a detrimental sardonic, acidic way; there are still stylish technical elements aplenty to delight the fanbase, but the approach has largely lost the atmosphere and the melody, having entered a more abstract, less passionate directory. Well, a sniff of gothic is all it takes to bring those back… and hold mankind ensnared for another few diverse music spells.