Februus

About

Opener and first single ‘Awaken’ bursts out of the speakers after an ambient introduction; serving as an excellent microcosm for what Uneven Structure are all about in the space of two minute. By marrying beautiful, haunting ambience with jarring, down tuned riff, the band have essentially taken the stereotypical djent sound and done it properly. Bands like Tesseract hint at the ambient side of he music, while there are a plethora of bands chugging away from the sake of it, but Uneven Structure are the first group to bring the two together an actually make it work. The perfect example of this is ‘Frost,’ which carries the listener through beautiful atmosphere, which are then completely replaced by a flurry of riffs and scream. On ‘Frost’ in particular, this works incredibly well, with the interchanging heavy guitars and lightly picked guitars making for one of the best songs to be released this year. Where Februus really succeeds is the manner in which the production brings out the more ambient and fragile moments of the record, in effect making these moments the album’s centrepiece. Mention must be made to vocalist Mattheiu Romarin whose monumental screams perfectly juxtapose his equally outstanding clean vocal. One only has to look to tracks like ‘Hail’ and the aptly named ‘Finale’ for an example of thi. Comparisons will be made to people like Mikael Akerfeldt in terms of sound; particularly with respect to his clean vocal. Polyrhythms abound throughout the album, with drummer Christian Schreill laying claim to some impressive drum fills (see ‘Hail’) and only further increase the intensity of the record. By all right, Februus could have easily been quite a derivative, unmemorable album, especially given how hard it is to create something that stands out in a vastly overpopulated style of music. However, Februus the complete opposite in that by focusing more on creating an atmosphere and drawing the listener to their sound, it immediately becomes memorable. In fact, the only real fault in the record is that the heavier parts can be construed as becoming quite repetitive as the album progresse. However, given the focus of Februus is creating an atmosphere and drawing out emotion, the occasional derivative riff is easily forgotten. .

via Last.fm

The Clerk says

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