Visitant

Arsis has been on my radar since 2008’s We are the Nightmare when I had learned of Ryan Knight’s leaving the band for The Black Dahlia Murder. That was what spurred me to finally check this band out. They have a pretty solid discography and Visitant is no exception. I have trouble picking one album out of the bunch as a favorite because they are all relatively solid. A Celebration of Guilt, Unwelcome, and Starve for the Devil just barely edging out this newest release. It has all the trappings of a normal Arsis release and is very similar in many ways to Unwelcome because James Malone held onto all the members from that release. Their release schedule is easily consumable but the distance between their last album and this was oddly long. Considering there were no line-up changes between the two releases you’d think the writing and recording process would be smoother. They had much shorter release gaps when there were, which is odd.

Noah (bass) has come a long way from when he was first in the band then came back for their last release. He was never bad but it’s nice to hear the progress he’s making over the years. It is the most audible this time around. The high-end finger-work James employs and the general treble crunch offers plenty of room for the bass to shine through easily; It’s almost as much time spent chugging as it is noodling up in the stratosphere. “Hell Sworn” has a great pattern on display and “Death Vow” lets the bass fly fast and loose. My favorite track, “Fathoms” has a very audible bass but it does not impress. It’s not always clear when the bass is doing something interesting. “Funereal Might” has some nice bass chops, but is probably the weakest track overall. The drums beats can be fairly standard, other than on the stellar track “Dead is Better”. There is some nice flair peppered through the patterns enough that it beefs up the whole excursion. Not quite enough to devote a whole listen-through, though. The guitar has great riffage in nearly every song with nice leads permeating nearly the entirety of every song. This is definitely not for everyone because some will see it as hyperactive or be suffering from ADD. I like it because you can focus on the guitars alone for multiple listens-through. There’s not a whole lot of obvious pattern repetition so it might take a couple of listens to realize how catchy the riffs really are. They’re easy to digest initially but take time to grow on you due to the rather atypical structure. This helps the solos greatly and makes them feel fresh, like on “Fathoms”. Unfortunately, this play style can make the rhythm section seem unrestrained or even discombobulated. Sometimes it is smooth in the lead section though, like on “Unto the Knife”.

In an interview with New Noise, James Malone indicated that each song is inspired by a specific horror movie. Not a tribute or even directly related and definitely not all-out as Death Revenge by Exhumed, but rather “possessed” by a certain film. I was really looking forward to that but really, most metal is to some degree or another. A lot of metal is about death, monsters, evil, violence, and horror anyway. The lyrics aren’t all that entirely different than most metal releases. Do all the songs blow me away? No, but the tracks that I like, I truly do enjoy thoroughly. There are a few lackluster tracks but I think it's not a loss when your albums weakest tracks are just examples of standard fare for your band. I like the production of this album and it is another facet similar to Unwelcome. It suits the writing style of the band well. It allows for high-end noodling with both guitars and still letting the bass beef up the low-end. How much more Arsis can you get than that?

Favorite tracks:
--Fathoms
--Easy Prey
--Dead is Better

Technical Skill: 82% Originality: 77% Song writing: 80% Production: 86% Accessibility: 74%

Arsis is a band that made a name for themselves with their 2004 debut album, A Celebration of Guilt, known for it's idiosyncratic take on melodic death metal. Since that album, I haven't paid much attention to the band – but I chanced upon this album and I'm fortunate to have done so.

Visitant is a black-tinged melodic death metal album whose theme is generic, but it's execution is as idiosyncratic as their debut. The palette of black, melodic and thrash metal is swirled nicely together, with hints of each color detectable in just about every song. The vocals are similarly a blend of something between black metal and screaming old school German thrash (I've honestly never heard a non-German vocalist sound so much like Tom Angelripper). The riffs remain very consistent in their melodic aspect throughout. There is a sharp understanding here of how to let riffs breath, when to deviate from a rhythm, where to place a few accents or an embellishment. The album is not showy or overt in it's technicality, but is highly skillful in placing the instruments in relation to one another, like in Fathoms and Death Vow where both guitars, the drums and vocals all seem to be operating autonomously but are really creating an elaborate big picture.

The blend of styles here is so cohesive, and on paper, makes no sense to add a technical flair to – this tells me that this band really writes music from the right place. The juxtaposition of the genres, the knack for melodic phrasing and astute understanding of where to advance and where to stay their hand; it all combines to make this a highly unique album.

The appearance of the album at first is one that belies it's uniqueness. The cover is generic, and titles are almost painfully cheesy – but there is actually some nice lyrics here. Easy Prey has a Lovecraftian aspect that many fail at – and over all the theme really fits the music. The theme and music together really solidify the cohesion of the album. And frankly, I'll take the dark and grim type of lyrics over the forced esoteric garbage any day.

As I said before, the album is thoroughly melodic. There is little in the way of big, ugly chords, or proggy breakdowns. The black-thrash-melodic death riffs are really only broken up by the occasional neo-classical riff, and spooky lead. And I mean melodic in that they actually sound like they could be vocal melodies, not just in that they are consonant as opposed to the relative dissonance of traditional death metal riffs. Actually melodic.

Death Vow is a great example of how this album treats technicality. After the melodic riff leads in, there follows immediately a bass playing it's own line, and the drums right behind the bass, and things unexpectedly shift into a 6 feel from the 4/4 it opened with. The main riff is plenty strong on it's own, and most would settle for relying on the strength of the riff itself, but the extra effort spent to fortify this part really elevate it. The drums dropping in and quietly shifting the feel from 4/4 to 6/4 (or 6/8, don't ask me to think about it that much) is such a pleasant early surprise. That's hardly all though, throughout the song there is many freely-moving guitar and bass parts that make a lattice of different rhythms and melodic lines. There is a riff before the main riff is played again, where there is a lead dancing under everything, while vocals are still going, with shifting drum parts, that actually make me think of Spawn of Possession. I have went from writing this band off, and ignoring them for over ten years to comparing them to the gods of technical death metal. Go figure.

This type of technicality - which will never catch the ear of the average listener like the egregious stop-start-stop-start bullshit or torrential oodles of noodles - requires a much, much higher level of understanding of music, especially as it pertains to harmony and general composition. (Because hey, if you're gonna impress the average listener with rehashed brain-dead symmetrical scale runs you stole from another band, why bother putting forth the Herculean effort required to construct well written, elaborate music? Yeah, this is why I shit on bands that do things the wrong way)

Further, even the bands that do have the technical faculty to make such things functionally listenable, might (and quite often do) lack the means to make the music potent and meaningful in that context. The only way you can do that is innate ability. Talent. Plain and simple.

The cheesiness of the album's theme is my only real gripe. I mean, the production is great, the melodies are sweet, the vocals are vicious and fitting, the songwriting is thoroughly robust, the songs are consistently good and sufficiently different from one another, and the album is full of character – they didn't leave me much to complain about. Even the intro to the opening track is tolerable.

My favorite track is between Easy Prey, Fathoms and Death Vow. They all have great melodies and employ that interweaving of instruments and lines.

As melodic as it is technical; as smart as it is passionate. I can't remember the last time I was so pleasantly surprised by an album. A number of high profile technical death metal album have been released in the last couple months from Revocation, Beyond Creation, Psycroptic, and Gorod, and if you would have told me this would be the best of the lot, I would have laughed! In fact, it's kind of the hero of the season, because it's the first one of the bunch that's legitimately impressed me. This album is fucking great.