ALLEGAEON
The Ossuary Lens
Metal Blade Records
While perhaps not quite on the order of the magnitude, nor as course-correcting, as, say Bruce Dickinson's reunion with IRONMAIDEN or Rob Halford rejoining JUDAS PRIEST, the return of original vocalist Ezra Haynes, Colorado tech metallers ALLEGAEON has had a noticeable impact on the band. And over the short term, at least, it is for the better.
No disrespect to Riley McShane, who sang quite admirably and effectively on ALLEGAEON's last three albums, but The Ossuary Lens marks something of a return to form - or at least sees the band getting "back to basics". McShane's cleaner vocal approach -relatively speaking, anyway - ushered in a more progressive, at times symphonic bent to ALLEGAEON's sound that was highlighted by covers of RUSH, YES and one Johann Sebastian Bach. Ironically, the quintet really seemed to have settled into this sonic mode with 2022's Damnum, then six months later McShane was gone.
The Ossuary Lens strips away much of the prog/symphonic forays/indulgences that had become an evermore integral part of the band's sound. At 44 minutes, it is the shortest of ALLEGAEON's seven albums by nearly 10 minutes - and a half-hour less than the unwieldy 73-minute Proponent For Sentience opus that kicked off the McShane era in 2016.
Yet while brevity is certainly not the main selling point for The Ossuary Lens, it does make the music here more compact, digestible and, indeed, impactful. And that is something that tended to escape ALLEGAEON in the past given the complexity of the material and learned, science-based content of the lyrics and themes - going all the way back to Haynes' first term with the band.
There is certainly no shortage of technicality on The Ossuary Lens - and tracks like "Chaos Theory" and "Dark Matter Dynamics" still offer some "all hail science" nerdiness, to borrow the title of a tune from Sentience. But the songs are generally leaner and a bit meaner than they been in some time, especially over the first half of the album.
The back-to-back bruisers "Dies Irae" and "The Swarm" are especially brutal, with Haynes' burly growl topping a tumult of darting riffs and Jeff Saltzman's galloping drums - both crammed into tidy 3:30-ish bursts, even with the opulent synths that open "Dies Irae". "Chaos Theory" is chuggier and laced with intricate melodic guitar motifs while the equally groovy "Carried By Delusion" adds regal, sweeping trems and a splash of classical guitar. The otherwise rather punishing "Driftwood" is the only track from Side 1, as it were, with any clean vocals, which Haynes' delivers with anthemic, KILLSWITCH ENGAGE-like flair after resisting the temptation/opportunity to do so elsewhere.
Kicking off with "Dark Matter Dynamics", the back 40 percent of the album is more epic and sprawling, capped by the nearly 7-minute "Wake Circling Above" that begins almost as a dirge, explodes over a turbulent midsection and sees Haynes dust off his clean vocals again for the towering, almost BORKNAGAR-like choruses. More mournful cleans highlight the grungy open to the finale "Scythe", but that soon gives way to heaving grooves, blasty beats and wolverine snarls as the song goes full tech-death to end things with an emphatic bang.
While the synths/symphonic elements are notable in their relative absence here, there is some certainly a Spanish flavor throughout, starting with the acoustic intro "Refraction". "Carried By Delusion", "Dark Matter Dynamics" and the otherwise thunderous "Imperial" all boast flamenco-like intros, with the especially fanciful flourish on "Dark Matters" provided by acoustic virtuoso Adrian Bellue (not to be confused with ex-KING CRIMSON guitarist Adrian Belew). It is accented later in the track by a brief jazzy jam. But these asides as mostly fleeting.
Though Haynes initially came back to ALLEGAEON so the band could honor a string of European tour dates after McShane's departure, the chemistry of before obviously remained. And perhaps because of his time away, Haynes has brought a ferocity and urgency back to the band that the other members seem to have fed off of here. And by sticking primarily to its melodic tech death strengths, the quintet has unleashed a beast of an album in The Ossuary Lens.
4.0 Out Of 5.0
