Dreaming Reality

I had nearly completely forgotten about this batch when the album here came out. Shouldn’t have been the case, though, as theirs was an appearance that gave a vital breath of fresh air to the still-hibernating classic US power/thrash scene at the very dawn of the new millennium with two fairly potent dark outings released in quick succession. The debut was the superior, less scholastic, more technical affair whereas the second instalment spent too much time in heavy tenebrous, insistently mid-paced, not terribly eventful riffage which presided over the several less orthodox flights of the imagination.

Nearly a decade after the sophomore the band are back in action, but not before the guitarist Paul Konjicija and the bass player Brian Glodde had honed their weapons in the camp of their colleagues from the progressive power/thrashers Dark Arena, another not very known outfit with a style not very far from the one of Antithesis, only more thrash-prone and marginally more ambitious. The album reviewed here, though, is vintage Antithesis as the guys try to balance between the previous two opuses by combining the more openly confrontational, thrashier approach of the debut with the more cumbersome pensive expletives of the second coming; seems like the right decision especially when the new vocalist emits a more passionate higher-strung tenor, intentionally bringing light into this dark sombre recording which enjoys an awesome start in the form of the forceful dark power/thrasher "The Madness", a crunchy moody rifforama that sets the prevalent tone although moments of belligerence (the speedy shredfest "Endless Circle") haven’t been completely excluded. Neither has the intelligent complexity from the first showing which materializes on the cleverly-concocted "The Prophecy". Then the album settles in its slightly one-dimensional comfort zone in the middle, with a string of semi-monotonous (the doom-laden title-track, the semi-balladic stroll "Venom Divine") compositions, the crushing intensity of "The Bleeding" a probable semi-rude awakening, before "Final Season" does away with another portion of sprightly headbanging riffs, overshadowing the dreamy progressive tractate “Blue”, a laid-back relaxer, and also a needed colour deviation title-wise, trying to penetrate the really thick dark, even plain black if you like, dominant clout.

No, darkness has never left this camp; a decade is not enough to exorcise it as the latter has settled only too comfortably here, leading the proceedings in a way quite comparable to the second effort, courteously stifling the cries for more dynamic faster-paced freedom… not fully, mind you, as the mentioned displays of dynamics are fairly legitimate; it’s just that the feeling of accumulated anti-thesis… sorry, climactic inertia is a bit too tangible at times, like the band know very well where they stand, and they only allow sparkles of diversity to flee from the prevalent oppressing mood, keeping their seismic tactics intact for a large portion of the time. A stance that is by all means worth respecting as there’s nothing essentially wrong with it; after all, one can easily procure a decent career for him/herself based on it alone… if only the self-titled debut hadn’t raised the lathe too high, drawing vistas of technical/prog-thrash grandeur with bold but sophisticated strokes. Well, it turned out that those were never the guys’ agenda, but I guess it’s all fine and orderly in their dark, neon black adobe… you can feel the comfort and cosy-ness from afar… a perfect place for entering the dreamy, fantasy world by being at the same time firmly grounded in reality.