No time like the present.

Whereas some bands spend way too long working on their material and refusing to release it to the outside world until its ready, others, like Arizona’s Knights of the Abyss just lock, load and get right down to it. What’s more astonishing in this case is the massive change in sound. Last year’s Juggernaut, was a bulldozing amalgamation of everything that is paradigmatic of poppy heavy music, i.e. grunts and shrieks, plenty of breakdowns, and a healthy, hearty dose of metal.

On Shades, the metal factor has been increased tenfold, there are no gleefully, over the top breakdownathon’s such as ‘Gridlocked.’ Instead what is here is a much more clinical, much more mature, thrashing, whirling set of songs that buzz and gnash throughout the album’s quasi 40 minute run time, and what these songs show is that these boys can seriously shred. The only problem though, is that although Knights of the Abyss can play their instruments (of this, there is zero doubt) to a high, high level, they have unfortunately forgotten something very, very important in their compositions, this being, personality.

Whilst Juggernaut, was a very young record, that even suggested that this band suffered from severe attention deficit disorder, it had heart, it had courage and bundles and bundles of energy. Shades, sounds a tad sterile, more so, it sounds too restrained, damn, at times you just wish they would just quit with the choppy, scything riffs and unleash the unbridled mayhem of old. Another factor that goes against them with Shades, is that they moved into a substrata of metal that is duly dominated by the Black Dahlia Murder who really, really raised the bar last year with ‘Nocturnal.’

Regardless, without doubt this band has tons of talent and potential, so let’s see if they can really unleash it on album number 3.

[Visit the band's website]

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