Eon

Formless burst onto the scene in 2010 with a demo that shook the underground technical death metal community. I still haven't listened to it, but it's not hard to assume it must have been game changing to get the reviews and the attention that it did when it was first released. As expected, a debut was much anticipated, but it wasn't until 2016 that we were greeted with a debut release from the band. And then, they immediately split up and have remained split up since then. So, barring a reunion, this and the demo are we all have to work with from Formless. As I stated above, I have no idea what the sound was like on their demo, so I went into this blindfolded and I left with mixed feelings.

On "Eon," Formless play a quite intriguing mix of atmospheric, warm and earthly technical death metal reminiscent of bands like Fallujah or Virvum, the latter of which released their debut this same year. Mix that with some obvious influences from bands like Obscura, Decrepit Birth and The Faceless and you have yourself a formula that sounds repetitive, but Formless does, at the very least, sound different from a lot of what was going on at the time. There are some key differences that make Formless standout. The most obvious of which are the very prevalent vocals of guitar player Annie, who does a fair amount of clean singing sections on a number of songs. Now, this wasn't uncommon at the time, as both Fallujah themselves and Inanimate Existence, Augury and others have experimented with female vocals in the past or around this same time. On "Eon," however, they're much harder to ignore than albums by those other bands. Her vocals are in almost every song and they're extremely hit and miss.

On some songs, she sounds good. Despite a few missed notes (I have no idea if it was intentional or not) for the intro of "Benighted by the Lake," she overall makes a good presence with her vocals throughout the song. However, to contrast, her vocals don't match the music at all and feel extremely out of place and forced on a song like "False Awakening." This back and forth between good and bad placement of her cleans switches from song to song. Overall it's a… failed idea. When it works, I applaud it, but it fails just as much and the music would have probably been better if they cut it out altogether. Since we're on the topic of vocals, the normal growled vocals done by Kevin are beyond stale. I guess he doesn't really hurt the music, but he certainly does nothing to help it out either. They're more of hardcore vocals than death metal vocals which you all already know I'm not a fan of.

The music itself is better than the vocal department. The riffs are mostly reminiscent of The Faceless and perhaps Decrepit Birth, but the feel of the album, mostly within the production, is rooted in Fallujah. It's a good mash of sounds, and while Formless doesn't write the greatest riffs and melodies on the planet, they write good enough ones to not make the music a complete flop. Some of the riffs are also deathcore influenced, which I again don't really like, but I can excuse, The Faceless and Fallujah did it as well from time to time. Again, it just feels more prevalent with this band, there seems to be at least one -core inspired riff per song. Not a big deal at the end of the day.

The individual performances are what you'd expect from technical death metal at this point. The guitars shred and kick ass, the drummer breaks the speed of sound with their blasts and the bass player… well the bass doesn't really play a role in any of this. I've listened to this album maybe 20 times and I don't recall a single moment where the bass player did something noteworthy. Those looking for just another dose of technicality won't be disappointed, as the lineup can surely make some technical music and it shows in the riffing and solos that are in the music.

Well, there we have it. What might be the one and only album we'll receive from the American death metal outfit, Formless. It's not a bad album, it's just really not that great either. My scoring, however, will be a little weird. By all means, this album is a perfect 5, but for some reason, I just keep listening to it. There's something unique and intriguing about it that makes me keep returning to it, even if I don't love the overall product as much as I would've liked. So, I'll settle on a 6/10 for this one. On the off chance that the band comes back, I'll keep an eye out for a follow up to this, but that doesn't seem likely…

FFO: Fallujah, The Faceless, Decrepit Birth
Favorite song: Sins
Final score: 6/10