ALLEGAEON
Damnum
Metal Blade Records
After filling in the spaces left by the pandemic with a pair of pretty cool cover version singles – a metalized take of the YES classic “Roundabout” and an even more challenging re-imagining of J.S. Bach with “Concerto in DM” paired with a traditional rendition of “In Flanders Fields”, both of which were included on the vinyl release of 2019’s Apoptosis - ALLEGAEON has gotten back to its usual technical death metal business. And while the Colorado quintet’s sixth album Damnum – which per Webster’s means “harm or loss” - doesn’t quite hit such lofty progressive or classical heights as the covers, it’s still a pretty damn ambitious effort from a band that has earned a reputation for its ambitiousness, for better or worse.
Indeed, the album delivers the tangle of careening riffs, tumultuous rhythms and Jeckyll & Hyde caterwauling we’ve come to expect from ALLEGAEON. Though Damnum is being billed as more of a “team effort,” with all of the members involved in the songwriting, that only streamlines things to a certain degree. There isn’t the bloat of the 2016 behemoth Proponent for Sentience, which clocked in at 72 minutes and included a cover of RUSH’s “Subdivisions”, but Damnum delivers plenty to chew through in its hour-long run time and gives everyone in the band an ample opportunity to showcase his respective chops.
A common gripe when it comes to ALLEGAEON is that while the band composes demanding, yet often compelling “music,” that doesn’t always translate into resonant or memorable “songs” – the same could be said about label-mates RIVERS OF NIHIL or the like-minded BLACK CROWN INITIATE, etc. And I get it, because to be honest, I think I have all of ALLEGAEON’s previous work – thanks to the Metal Blade PR team – and the only songs I can name offhand are the cover tunes: “Subdivisions”, “Roundabout” and the Bach concerto. D’oh!
But that’s not as much of an issue with Damnum. The album boasts a collection of fluid, genuinely beefy tunes, some of them with legitimate staying power, like “Of Beasts And Worms”, “Vermin”, the symphonic black metally “Saturnine” and the all-over-the-place finale “Only Loss” that slingshots from mournful doom to deathcore to blackened choruses yet still manages to connect. There still might not be an abundance of hooks here, but each of these tracks offers a money shot chorus – typically featuring frontman Riley McShane’s intermittent clean vocals – or a bombastic melodious/groovy burst that accomplishes the same effect.
Another winner is the album’s one true departure, the meandering “Called Home” that trades most of the tech-death histrionics for a proggier sprawl that recalls OPETH during the Ghost Reveries/Watershed transitional period. Trippy, mournful clean vocals, acoustic guitars and hint of piano play against crashing riffs and growls in what is the album’s most adventurous track as the various elements and jarring contrasts come together seamlessly and make for quite a stunning centerpiece.
Elsewhere, though, ALLEGAEON’s penchant for mixing and matching feels extraneous or unnecessary. Nearly every song has some sort of moody, mellow intro that ultimately gives way to the far more turbulent bulk of the work – and that’s not counting “The Dopamine Void, Pt. 1” or “In Mourning”, which are short, song-length segues. And while all that may help build drama, or whatever, it also serves as something of a reset button, forcing the band to gain momentum all over again and making for a balky flow.
The same can be said for the jazzy jam that punctuates “To Carry My Grief Through Torpor And Silence” or the piano solo in the otherwise ferocious “Blight”. As an intro, a la “The Dopamine Void, Pt. 1”, that sort of thing does not feel too out of place, here is stops the songs dead, no matter the intent or degree of daring.
Still, in the end, Damnum is an accomplished and satisfying work. After more than 15 years and a number of lineup changes – guitarist Greg Burgess is the lone original member, and drummer Jeff Saltzman is new here -ALLEGAEON continues to push the envelope. And while the band might actually push said envelope too far at times, it certainly deserve kudos for not growing complacent or, even worse, bowing to market forces at this stage of the game.
3.5 Out Of 5.0
