V

Fans of intensely melodic and phantasmal modern-day "varsal" heavy metal in the vein of Avian, Enchantress, Frenzy, Helion Prime, Knightmare, (the penally extirpated) Spellcaster and Titan Killer are guaranteed to, ah, vehemently value Raleigh's Mega Colossus - elevated, in 2016, from "Colossus" - and its vividly synchronized musical intellect, thus far verily vanguarded via the Tar Heel quintet's mildly exalted full-length, as well as succeeding hexadic EP, "V" (released 366 days ago), which, given an extra track or two, could have been pimped as second LP proper. With four (4) studio originals topped by innocuous pair of live attackers, "V"'s half-hour-and-some congenial basic-goodness entails a slightly more eldritch and compact Knightmare - bassist Anthony Micale's vocally tenured enterprise - whose subtle signatory vapors soon take to ineluctable, glorious flight, which, heedless, remains vectors away from matching the victorious vagility of said alter ego's Walk In The Fire, released in Summer of 2018. (For that, you've to gravitate towards 2016's HyperGlaive.)

On top of moulding yours virally into a vafrous vagarian, "V", both letter and EP, for all their slip-sliding knavery, prove relatively dense deals, from the ominously enchanted..."U"-Turn on opener "Kaiju King" to fore-mentioned closers, with catchy twin-guitar hooks and richly variegated pirouettes - not to mention heaps of zealously vociferous "mixed scales" soloing - cramming the North Carolinians' breezily accessible vessel, which demands many repeat-listens to wear out. Put in a different light, it's the kind of record which plants a brain seed on first listen, only for it to take root and germinate, thus, increasing its general, in-depth enjoyment with each compounding listen...until such vegetation, Heaven forbid, withers on vine at some far off, distant point in the future.

Surely, the faster tempo-ed "Bug Hunt" is a volatile contradiction; between its harried, high velocity, snagging riff-work, brow-broiling super soloing, and ethereally transporting Helion Prime-meets-Cardiant styled choral/lyrical beatitude or whimsy, one begins to wonder if MC's ascribed genre should instead relate "whirly-gig'in' power-metal"...For that matter, the temperate, easy-going and/or radio friendly "Navigator", with its inter-galactic space rock countenance (reminiscent of Knightmare's recent, albeit low-key and primed Space Nights LP), affable backing vocals and velvety fade-out, wouldn't sound out of place on H. Prime's Terror of the Cybernetic Space Monster. Potentially, front "titan" Sean "The Train" Buchanan assumes the male portion of this hypothetical view.

Beforehand, "Atlas" comfortably spins sphere thanks to Micale's energetically pulsing bass line, Doza Mendoza's "hyper"-kinetic skins (he once journeyed for fellow North Carolinian jesper, Bloody Hammers), and introspectively thorough, NWOBHM modeled twin ax gesticulations, courtesy of further ex-BH handyman Bill Fischer and American Empire-r Stephen Cline, the stellar lot upheld by an ever-clear and salient, mid-to-slightly-upper-mid range Buchanan. Although this last, alongside preceding opener "Kaiju King" - revel with me, as Disney played no part in its divulging! - as well as "Navigator", comprise snappier, par-for-the-source samplers geared towards those still oblivious, make sure to stick around, crown or no crown, as the live fare, for one, benefits from wicked production engineering, perhaps fooling us into believing the band opted to record both "The Mountain That Rides" - a bad-ass, if not mendaciously rampaging, semi-thrash-y outlier seeing "The Train" head "off the hot rails to Hell" - and extensive EP mudslinger, nearly seven-minute long "Sea of Stars", together, in full, without parsing, splicing or vulcanizing.

While the latter takes time to voyage across what I visualize as polar opposite to a "supervoid" (think Boötes Void - the black metal totem, more or less galactically, that super vast, eerie pit of starless darkness spanning millions of light years), eventually acclimatizes itself by long-winded, noodling soloing of a typically harmonious grandeur, with same applying to our derailed "Train"'s vocal acrobatics, for which he pulls out all the stops before calling it a light-day.

(Relax, such venerably gasped extrapolation ain't rocket science.)