In-Quest "Epileptic" CD
[Goodlife]
Holy shit! This is the best thing Goodlife has released in a long time, which comes as a bit of a surprise since there's nothing hardcore about this record whatsoever! Instead this is monstrous Belgian death metal that's played at a slower pace and has a lot of melody and some basic progressive sorts of influences going on. The vocalist is also in Aborted, so expect effortless shifts from insane low growls to sneering midrange screams with a lot of layering and panning effects that add more force. Musically the songs are based around lots of midpaced rhythms with stuttered chord progressions that have the air of a simpler Meshuggah or something of that nature, layered with tons of sweet melodic leads and harmony textures, tasteful keyboards occasionally adding accent textures in the distance, etc. "Reverberating Human Callousness" gets a bit more openly melodic and has some light Swedish death metal influences going on (think Soilwork), "Deprivation Synapse" has some of the best solos I've heard in a long time, and "Scorched" is 7+ minutes with lots of thick sustained notes and powerful chord progressions that have a lot more dissonance than the other songs - very fucking cool. The weakest track is a cover of Pro-Pain's "In for the Kill" (don't ask me why the hell they'd cover Pro-Pain), but they even make that better than the original. The recording takes a smidge of getting used to, but it's pretty damn nice. The vocals sound awesome, the guitars and bass work together perfectly (the guitars are so crunchy that they almost have an overproduced thing happening, but the bass perfectly balances out the low-end), the keyboards are expertly mixed, and despite rigid drum tones they pull off a dense rhythm section. There are a few things I might change, but they've got a better than average set of tones already. The layout's incredible here, using lots of mechanical images and textures to create a really clean and consistent look, using only one font, a good color scheme, etc. The band logo is even placed on the front cover using a foil inlay, which of course looks great. Lyrically things generally cover abstract personal topics with a few more broad topics tackled on rare occasion, and while I'm not impressed by the lyrics I don't mind them either. Good stuff. I really like this a lot. It's not groundbreaking or anything like that, but it's a really enjoyable record that's well written and well performed, so I'd recommend checking it out if it seems like it might be your thing. (8/10)
Running time - 42:39, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: Reverberating Human Callousness, Deprivation Synapse, Placid Vortex]
Goodlife Recordings - http://www.goodliferecordings.com

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