Eyes World Shut

There's a rather cluttered amalgamation of keyboard-heavy melodic death metal with scant industrial touches in Finland. Saint of Disgrace, Fear of Domination and of course Shade Empire come to my mind first. Add Code for Silence to that ever-growing list, Eyes World Shut is the band's second major foray into the packed fold, and it isn't the most convincing effort out there. For one, the record sounds *shudder* modern, in a rather bad way at times. The curtailing brawn of the riffs collapses into mindless chunky backing chords that while palpably heavy, don't contribute much to the final equation. The drawling, whining cleans make tracks like "Death Bringer" sound like a pale doppelganger of Sybreed without the dapper synth work. Yikes.

It ain't all terrible, though. Code for Silence take on new, atmospheric life with Komi's synths really get working, coming off like Intoxicate O.S.-era Shade Empire on the awesome "Neo-synchronized Capone Dance," the album's definite highlight. It is desperate sounding, orchestral and epic, making good use of tonal dichotomy. "Eye for an Eye" also adds some verisimilitude to the experience. The death growls are capable enough and there is a fair bit of diversity in the approach with the dual vocalists, but most of the styles are executed in a middling manner at best.

"Release the Hounds" busts out of the gates with some murky death metal tremolos weaved throughout a decent blastbeat assault, proving that the band can and should push the envelope in this manner more often. So much of the remainder of Eyes World Shut is faceless groove filler with annoying vocals and occasional deviations into interesting atmospheric trinkets of terror courtesy of the keyboardist.

Code for Silence obviously didn't convince me on Eyes World Shut as a whole, even though there are a couple of good tracks. The better bits stand out sorely next to the generic remainder. The Shade Empire influences seem to bring the best out of these guys, and they even have a saxophone solo on "On the Streets of a Sleeping City," which comes right out of Zero Nexus and the more recent stuff from the aforementioned bigger act. Check out "Neo-synchronized Capone Dance" to see Code for Silence at their best, and make your own judgement, because I could go either way with this. Passable.