Yeah yeah yeah, I know I'm eating my words from a bit ago, again. I said that I could not really get into albums like Periphery's P5 and TesseracT's War of Being. I was once again wrong, at least about one of them. Sorry P5, you'll have to wait until another time, where I may or may not like you. Anyway, War of Being post before an Altered State post, what's wrong with me?
Well, I already did an Altered State post, although I might do another when I upload it to TankieTube, because it is just that good and absolutely deserves two posts. But we're not here to talk about Altered State. I left War of Being playing, and I made sure to sit through Echoes, which eventually did grow on me, but it was holding me back. The Grey, Legion, and War of Being are all amazing songs, and the rest of the album definitely holds itself up pretty well too. While it does flow well, I do feel like this is more of an album made of "heavy hitters" rather than the one really amazing album flow that Altered State has. Stop comparing it to Altered State!
Going into this, I thought the production was pretty flat, and that's because it might be, but it also might not be? I'm kind of struggling to hear it, but there are moments that definitely could have been mixed better, and there are moments that live up to TesseracT generally having good mixing. You have to realize, bad TesseracT mixing is like Monuments mixing on a good day, so it's not the end of the world. There are so many places where the bass rips and is just so present, I love that this band does this with their bass instead of just making it low in the mix or pretty much just muting it (I'm still salty about AJFA, even though I don't listen to Metallica too much anymore). I also need to talk about the vocals, because Danithan Tompkins went over 9000 with this album. He's always been a great vocalist, but this album marked a bit of a style shift and a return to One's harshness. One sounded great, but I believe it may have not been good for his voice. He manages to bring that energy and more to War of Being, hopefully in a healthy way this time. Now to talk about riffs.
War of Being feels like its own thing, but I can hear bits and pieces of other albums at times. Sometimes, I hear One. Others Altered State. Others, I can hear Altered State 2 (Polaris). I even hear a bit of Sonder. Its nice to see that they didn't just mush the sounds together though, you can hear it for a moment if you catch it, and then its back to being War of Being. Some of these riffs though, and the guitar tone, almost remind me of a modern djentified and progiffied version of Trivium's Shogun. The Grey has a riff like this, and so does War of Being. If you've listened to Trivium's Shogun, you'll know what I mean when you hear it. In fact, IF YOU WANT SPECIFIC SONGS TO LISTEN TO, PLAY THE GREY and WAR OF BEING. Now that the people in the back have heard me, I wanted to say that I absolutely love the riffs, and I want more of this.
i went off, but i do want this
I want a full album of this. I want Shogun taken to the highest level with vocals done by both Ashe and Danithan, hell, let Ashe write and Danithan sing. I really enjoyed Shogun, and it made for a really good metalcore/thrash metal album with some proggy elements. If anybody could make a Shogun-like album, incorporating that lovely guitar tone with their own amazing bass tone, I would be a happy girl. I would probably pay for a CD in fact, because it would probably be one of my favorite albums of all time.
Anyway, I've gone on long enough. Enjoy War of Being, and don't worry, I'll post Altered State tomorrow.