Sylosis – A Sign of Things to Come
Sylosis – A Sign of Things to Come
Nuclear Blast
Release Date: 08/09/2023
Running Time: 43:00
Review by Rory Bentley
8.5/10
Hold the phones, Sylosis have just dropped an absolute ass-beater to cap off your summer of Metal! After a well-received comeback in the form of 2020’s shred-fest “Cycle of Suffering”, its follow up was always going to be a great source of intrigue among Thrash fans, particularly since Josh Middleton parted ways with Architects to make Sylosis his main focus once more.
Although written and recorded while Josh was still on guitar duties for the Metalcore behemoths, it is easy to see why he felt it was time to back himself to the hilt once again. ‘Deadwood’ is an absolutely massive opener, bristling with anger and bile and played at neck-snapping speed as Middleton’s commanding bellow straddles the line effortlessly between catchy and caustic. Fans of the old stuff will be delighted, and curious first timers will be pulled into some immaculate modern Heavy Metal that puts big hooks in the foreground.
The title track and its chunky proceeding number ‘Pariah’ are perhaps more representative of the album as a whole. Focusing on stomping head-smashing riffs, the song is elevated by some impressively accomplished clean vocals that are melodic without softening the hard edges of the Metallic cacophony that they accompany. As great as the Sylosis catalogue is, it may be a little too Proggy and technical to cross over to the wider audience it deserves (there’s no accounting for taste), but not so here. After Architects’ more stripped-down approach over their last two records, not always to my taste, I did have a small concern that the more bland aspects of this approach may have rubbed off on this album, however Josh has taken the aspects of this sound that work the best and grafted it onto that sadistic Sylosis crunch.
Songs like ‘Poison For The Lost’ with its anthemic refrain of “take off the fucking crown!” and infectious melodic lead lines are designed to be played in big rooms and festival stages all over the world. By dialling the speed and technicality back just a pinch, “A Sign of Things to Come” is a mainstream Metal record in the finest sense. ‘Descent’ has the pit-destroying riffs and gang chants to hook in Trivium, While She Sleeps and Machinehead fans alike but there’s still finger-bleeding fret abuse and steel-wrist chugging to keep the grumpy lad in the Kreator shirt banging his noggin til his neck turns to dust.
On ‘Absent’ they even get away with a ballad. Josh croons his arse off over clean atmospheric picking before the back half of the song explodes into a textured, almost Post-Metal crescendo, just in case you were worried they’d gone soft. It also helps that this is followed up by the seething ‘Eye For An Eye’ that weaves between jagged tremolo-picked verses and another chorus that would slot nicely onto a mid-period Bring Me The Horizon album. Which is a good thing, sorry sweaty bullet belt grebs.
At a slick 43 minutes the record avoids the element of bloat that could be levelled at some of the band’s previous efforts, and all 10 of these songs are winners. The album is perfectly sequenced, with throat-rippers like ‘Judas’ always on hand to right the ship in favour of brutality after every melodic experiment. With no new Trivium, Parkway Drive or indeed Architects album out this year and Avenged Sevenfold going mental (in the best way), Sylosis have stepped up and delivered the mainstream Metal album we need this year.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Deadwood
02. A Sign of Things to Come
03. Pariahs
04. Poison for the Lost
05. Descent
06. Absent
07. Eye for An Eye
08. Judas
09. Thorns
10. A Godless Throne
LINE-UP:
Josh Middleton – guitars, vocals
Alex Bailey – guitars
Ali Richardson – drums
Conor Marshall – bass
LINKS:
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