Date: 2021
Total time: 34:14
Label: Self-Financed
New band from the Canadian duo of James Coyle and Taylor Pottle of AXIS DISRUPT. And as you can imagine, it’s all about Melodic Death Metal, but this effort is their fullest one! “The Fall Of The Wake” pays homage to the Scandinavian Melodeath, acrobatic on the ropes of INSOMNIUM, BE’LAKOR, DARK TRANQUILLITY. However, if we say it’s just that, we will be wrong. The truth is that lately we’ve heard some very strong releases from this genre, usually from Scandinavia.
In their music, Taylor and James are intensely romantic, dark, melancholic, as they often make you think of the dark past intensely, in their own way. The characteristic tremolo riffing makes its appearance as well. Nevertheless, one can hear various Black Metal outbursts in here, for example in the middle of “The Fall Of The Wake”. At these points, sometimes the melody goes away, but this does not happen often. Most of the extreme points of the album have the features that one would expect from the Melodeath genre (for example “Searching the Darkened Skies” and elsewhere) with the characteristic melodic mini-solos echoing behind the blastbeats . In all of this, an acoustic prelude (“Enervation”) resounds, as well as an acoustic last pass of the album (“Invinsible Light”), faithfully following in the footsteps of DARK TRANQUILITY, who often take care to start and close in a meloacoustic way.
Taylor Pottle’s vocals, for those who know them, are more Blackened than one would expect for the idiom and this may surprise some. Before listening to the album, anyone who knew AXIS DISRUPT might have been a little worried about the vocals in particular and the truth is that this is not the strongest point of the album, to be frank. As for the music, a special mention should be made of “The Language, Death, Eternal”, which from the middle, contains one of the most beautiful riffs I have heard lately in the idiom. The same goes for Beyond the Grave, close to its mini solo. These are two of the strongest songs on the album, along with the homonymous, which contain amazing music in them.
While I have never been a fan of AXIS DISRUPT, it must be acknowledged that this is by far the best Canadian music effort. The Melodeath genre should be proud of this release, which while it also contains some Black points, manages to pass this melancholy feeling, while it contains awesome music inside. Maybe some clear vocals here and there would help, maybe the extrema vocals could exude a more melancholic sense as well.
Rating: 7,5/10
Editor: Giannis Michailidis
Related Link: FALLENSUN –Bandcamp Page
