Apparently this album is about Spring and things associated with the season like new beginnings and growth. I’d never have guessed it. More understandable is the influence of this band’s home city, a dilapidated industrial town in Pennsylvania.
The dark and evil patterns at the beginning which recall Hypocrisy remain throughout this album. “The Conscious Seed of Light” is hard-hitting, brutal and growly. We are invited in the publicity to draw in the emotions of this slightly progressive death metal. The only emotions I could feel was anger and intensity. The only track with a little bit extra was “Mechanical Trees”, which had a melancholic element inside the overwhelming technical death metal. There’s even a suggestion of post metal with triggering drums. For me this album never really took off though. The heavy artillery is out there, but this didn’t seem to be about songs. Rather it’s about atmosphere and a persistence which would do death metal monsters Decapitated proud. “Soil and Seed” is twisted and gnarly. No prisoners are taken. It’s template death metal, perhaps not surprisingly as the producer is Erik Rutan who works with Morbid Angel and Hate Eternal. This, I wonder, may be the problem as it’s so technically perfect that it needs some variation. From “Soil and Seed” the furious assault continues with “Central Atheneum”. After the more interesting “Mechanical Trees”, it’s more bang, clatter, triggers and intensity until it’s time for the final track “Airless”. This track is more deeply grained. There’s nothing light about this. Finally it fades into oblivion.
In spite of the suggestion that we might discover various emotions and the prelude to a post-human earth, this never happened. I appreciated the brutality, intensity and technicality that went with it but for me “The Conscious Seed of Light” didn’t break out of its shell.
(5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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