Nocturne

This is sort of a sad album to listen to. It's an album by a band who briefly gained some traction, showed tons of promise, lost a core member, released a stinker of a second album, and then slowly fizzled out in the years that followed. A pity that they didn't stick around long enough to put out a worthy successor to this album. Its style is a unique product of the mid 2000s metalcore and post-hardcore craze that I can't think of another example of.

Somehow, this album combines mid 2000s metalcore, screamo, classical music, and mathcore in a way works and is recognizable. It's easily The Human Abstract's most "metal" release (with the exception of their demo) and the metal influence comes as classically-tinged melodic death metal riffing that's usually quite fast and technical. This album has a good deal of speed, particularly on Mea Culpa and Self Portraits of the Instincts. The choruses are rousing mid 2000s metalcore affairs, and the songs are frequently puncutated with mathy breakdowns, accompanied by wheedly little shreds. The song structure and writing is masterful. They write pretty technical material, but don't let that get in the way of the songs and riffs being super catchy. There are a few soft interludes, some contained within songs like the In Flames-like part in Polaris. Sotto Voce is the standout of all of the interludes. It's a pure acoustic classical guitar piece that stands very well on its own. The other standalone interlude, Desiderata, segues into Vela Together We Await the Storm, which, while being the band's most popular song, is the biggest stinker on here. It's saturated with boring breakdowns and its clean vocal part and wheedly shreds are weirdly placed. A bummer of an album ending, but the rest more than redeems it.

The other thing that sort of drags the album down is Nathan Ells' vocals. You can tell he's putting everything he's got into the performance, as it's very passionate and high energy. His vocal tone, while pretty distinctive, can get tiring to listen to after a while. At least he keeps the performance varied, with a good balance of pulpy screams and snarling clean singing. His softer voice, as heard in the middle of Harbinger and the end of Channel Detritus, is hideous. It's nasal and breathy and smacks of emo singer too much for my taste. Also, the vocal arrangements are a bit too busy at times. The instruments don't take any backseat and demand undivided attention, so some songs make less sense with a very vocal-driven arrangement. The two songs that appeared on the demo that were re-recorded for this album, Polaris and Movement from Discord, both had better vocal arrangements in their original demo forms that let the instruments breathe.

I find that I can easily ignore the vocals and stinker of a final track, though, because everything else kicks so much ass. I have no idea if this band still exists or even ever broke up, but whatever they do in the future, nothing can hold a candle to this album. They captured lightning in a bottle here and the two albums that they released after this one before going dormant don't even come close to it. Until they come back or until another band picks up the style and does it justice, I hold this album in very high regard as one of the most unique and enjoyable metalcore albums I've ever heard.