Yay for music. Ya bastard.

You take my breath away.  Yet emptiness has darkened the world, so I must close my eyes to see your face…

Emotions grow behind these closed eyes.   Sorrow, joy, fury, hope, fear…  Momentary pain as it is, it will grow to shape me.

Emotions turn to strength, and I open my iron eyes to the darkened world.  I wish I could make others see through this pain, through the black, and I wish everyone could see the greater purpose that we have to serve.  No one else will fight.

So we must.

Holy nuts.  It’s too short and insane to go song by song in detail.  Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation has some of the craziest bass shit ever, and a great breakdown line.  Necrotizing Fasciitis has the most brutal breakdown on this entire EP and the tapping rapes demons.  Cancrum Oris has even more tapping and sweeping than the last song.  What the hell, it’s so disgustingly awesome.  Pit of Pestilence has mad bass and guitar tapping duos in the most retardedly crazy harmony possible.  Finishing with the song Prodormal Phase probably scarred me for the rest of my life.  My reaction to this band was.. WHAT THE FUCK.  It’s like the band members were on crack when they wrote this, but it also amplified their playing ability, making for an entertainingly disgusting and fast technical sound.  Enjoyable to those who have aquired the taste, but others would call it stupid and throw it away.  I LOVE it.

I like to think that this album is called Colors has its name because it is like a long, flowing, beautiful painting of many colors and sends its message through using these colors in perfect harmony.  Each song flows into the next seamlessly and it makes for an amazing, unique experience listening to this album all the way through (sort of like Catch 33 by Meshuggah).  The mix between death metal chromatic riffing, core-esque breakdowns, technical metal impossible instrumental lines, beautiful keyboard/guitar/bass lines, and chilling vocal melodies with acoustic guitar make this album so versatile and unique, and so utterly, undescribably enjoyable.

1.  Foam Born (A) The Backtrack- This is just the perfect way to start off the whole album, with an astonishingly beautiful piano/vocal melody and then it delves into the first guitar riff of the whole album, accompied with super cool keyboard arpeggios.  It starts light, and then hits hard, great starter.

2.  (B) the Decade of Statues- Part 2 of Foam Born, it starts with a heavy riff and is immediately followed by a tritone breakdown.  Not very like the band, but a great surprise.  Although it has its melodic parts, this song spends most of its time showing off the band member’s chops.  With an amazing yet strange interlude near the end, it makes for a great ending to Foam Born.

3.  Informal Gluttony- This song is the centerpiece of the intro trio to the album, and fits very well in terms as a mesh to meld together the 2-part Foam Born with the next song, Sun of Nothing.  This song really switches back and forth between heavy and technical to melodic and beautiful.  Great bass skill here, and it has some nice vocal melodies as well.

4.  Sun of Nothing- By far one of the my absolute favorites off of the album, and reaches one of my favorites songs of all time to listen to.  I love how it constantly switches back and forth from acoustic guitar and clean vocals to heavy electric guitar riffs and deep growls.  However, the highlight of the song has to be about 7 minutes in, where it goes fully acoustic and he sings “I’m floating towards the sun, the sun of nothing” in one of the most beautiful voices I’ve heard in a song.  I get goosebumps every time.  I fell in love with this song on the first listen.

5.  Ants of the Sky- I think they put this song right after Sun of Nothing on purpose to screw with our brains.  It starts immediately with crazy guitar sweeping and continues for the next minute to show how crazy the guitarist is before switching to a piano melody.  I love the really progressive riffs they play no this song, and the bluesy solos about 3 and a half minutes in.  This just might be the hardest song on the album to play, but that just adds to its appeal.  The jazzy clean solo toward really made the song, and then the song ends perfectly.

6.  Prequel to the Sequel- One of the catchiest songs on the album for sure, and one of their most popular.  It starts with an awesome and well-written guitar line and continues with flowing guitar lines and exchanging breakdowns placed throughout the song.  This is pretty much more of a summation of the old BTBAM sound combined and mixed fluidly with elements of the new style.  I really love the lines in here, and anyone who likes any form of metal should find at least one part of this song that they love.

7.  Viridian- The acoustic beauty piece of the album, it statts off with a beautiful chord line and introduces a gorgeous and sparkly bass solo for most of the rest of the song.  This is where the writing skill and technique of the band really stands out, showing that they CAN drop metal and write something completely unrelated, but still make it enjoyable.  No vocals to this song, but its a great one.

8.  White Walls- The epic 14-minute conclusion to this masterpiece of an album.  Was it worth the wait?  HELL YES it was.  This song is basically just a concentrated mix of ALL of BTBAM’s good elements combined into an epic centerpiece for the whole album to end with.  I can’t really go in depth with this song, as it varies so much, but the ending has one of the most well written solos I’ve heard, and ends with a major arpeggio on the piano that leaves with you goosebumps even after it’s over.  Best ending possible, listen to the whole album in succession to amplify it.  Totally awesome.

One of the best albums I’ve ever spent my damn money on?  I think so.

So today, I had the most epic bus ride of my life.  I was riding on the bus like always, minding my own business, just like everyone else.  Out of nowhere, this guy whips out his cellphone and starts talking really loud, laughing like hell, and disturbing everyone.  Very kindly, the bus driver calls back to him to get off of his cell phone.  His request was ignored, and the man continued to chat his butt off on his cell phone.  Slightly more aggravated, the bus driver called back once again for the man to get off his phone.  The man yelled back, “HELL NO!”.  The bus driver proceeded to pull over and stop the bus.  As he stood up and walked over to the man, everyone he passed just watched in fear/awe.  This bus driver was a 6 foot tall, HUGE, BUFF, SCARY dude.  He looked VERY angry with the man, and the once-confident man was VERY afraid.  ”I would advise you to follow the rules of the bus.”, said the bus driver.  The man responded “…. Sorry, sir.”  The bus driver proceeded to get back in his seat and start driving.  SO epic.

In short, this album was pretty mindblowing in so many aspects.  It’s brutal, fast-paced, technical, and actually very musically satisfying for someone who enjoys a great deal of talent put into the music they listen to.  I haven’t done an album review in a while, so I guess I’ll give this a shot.

Color Lines- This song is pretty much the essence of Circle of Contempt.  It has everything that they will eventually show throughout the album; talent, musicality, technicality, catchy melodies, heavy riffs, and metronome perfect drumming.  I especially love the outro riff, it just really hooks.  Great song to start with, but it totally gets raped by the next song.

Nothing Imminent- There are no words to describe this song.  The first time you hear it, you would think its an average Circle of Contempt song; lots of technicality and breakdowns all over the place that are immediately followed by melodic lines.  But when you hear that end solo, its mindblowing.  It is one of the best guitar solos I’ve ever heard in my entire life, and I’ve heard a lot.   The fusion of shred and jazz progressions really makes the solo unique from others in the genre and really destroys all others.  After you hear it, the whole song just feels like a buildup to that one moment in the end where the solo kicks in.  Amazing.  Nothing more to say.

Artifacts in Motion- Great song, but there’s not really much to say about this one.  It’s basically your average Circle of Contempt song, nothing that really hugely stands out about it.  Except for the fact that I really liked the opening dialogue.  Could’ve been better though, if they didn’t recycle the melody line so much.

Concealed- Holy crap, some parts of this song took me by surprise.  For the math metal/djent fan, this song is amazing.  A few off-time breakdowns in the song were even too complicated for me to follow along with, and I thought that was amazing!  And I loved how this song implicated singing vocals in it too, it added a really haunting feel to the song.  This song is basically an exhibition of technical ability in terms of timing and rhythm.  It just keeps you wondering “what. the. hell.” in some parts of the song.  Really enjoyable (if you can stomach weird music like this).

Remnants Left- This song is probably less noticeable at first listen.  You know how it is, there’s those songs in the middle of albums that people will kinda skip through.  This definitely shouldn’t be skipped through, it is one of the highlights of this damn album in my opinion.  It starts off really droning and dark sounding and immediately plunges into those famous off-time breakdowns that math metal is known for.  I especially loved the beautiful melody in the end…. and how it was followed by an insane offtime tritone breakdown.  Badass.

C.O.C.- It’s pretty obvious that the song title is short for Circle of Contempt, but whatever.  It’s a great song, and really exhibits the drums.  There’s a short drum fill in the middle of the song, but I don’t think it shows his talents enough.  However, the riffs are MAD in this song!  It’s probably more of a song for the traditional technical death metal fan.  I love that genre, so it really seems to suit me.  There is one breakdown in this song, but thats definetely enough because its one of the best on the album.

Prelude for the Implication-  This is the only instrumental song on the album, and it’s executed amazingly.  The intro is just dazzling and gives me those goosebumps you get when you’ve heard or seen something absolutely amazing or beautiful.  Nothing technical or even death metal about this song, its just a brief break from all the madness.  I love this song, it helps me calm down and find myself.  I feel like it belongs in a movie or a video game or a TV show or something as an ending theme song.  It really sounds like a grand resolution to a huge event that took place, and everything has returned to how it should be.  This could’ve fit as the last song on the album, but I’m not complaining, as long as it’s there.

The Pendulum Swing-  From the beginning, you can already tell that this song is going to be one of the more brutal ones off of the album.  The intro just has this dark line behind a massive chugging riff.  From there on, it just sorta feels like you’re going to be punched in the face at any moment.  The technicality and brutality of this song is just so amazingly balanced.  It sorta feels like it’s going to be this way for the whole song, but it changes.  All of a sudden, a melodic line appears behind an almost anthemic breakdown riff.  It just ends so well, I love this song.

A Day for Night-  I WOULD have called this an average Circle of Contempt song IF the bass player wasn’t so damn good.  Basically a song meant to exhibit the bass players skill, there are two moments where you go “WHAT THE FUCK” and rewind to hear the bass again.  Another special moment in this song is the outro riff.  Great way to end the song after all the craziness.

Zerohour-  The intro riff basically sets the tone for the whole song.  It is WEIRD (but a good weird).  It’s a great song, but I have one complaint; they only recycle the first two melodies in the intro riff and don’t introduce any more throughout the song.  It’s actually a really short song, it ends about halfway through and the rest is just filler stuff, basically.  But it’s awesome while it lasts….

Scour the Sharpside- This MIGHT be my favorite song on this album (sorta tied with Concealed and Nothing Imminent).  It really shows what Circle of Contempt does best all in one song; technicality, density, melody, song structure, and fuckin’ craziness.  This is probably the only song fit to end the album besides Prelude for the Implication.  Great stuff, great stuff.

Overall, definitely worth every penny I spent for it (legally downloaded music FTW).  Hopefully I can get some reviews up soon. -___-

This is a shout out.  To my parents who says I can’t go on facebook.  To all those selfish, ignorant, foolish people out there who think that they are better than everyone else.  To the ones that harass me.  This is for all those people who talk s*** with their backs to me, and to those select few teachers who never believed in me, and never will.  To those whom I will grow to dislike in the future and to the friends that I will lose.  And finally, to this stupid sophomore year ahead of me that may shape the rest of my life in high school; F**K. YOU.  Damn, that feels good. x)

“What I am most afraid of is failure.”

Whenever I said this, I was reassured that that time wouldn’t come, the day I finally failed.  Guess what?  It came.  I guess reassurance just isn’t enough anymore, but I guess I never really took it to mind anyway.  Pity.