April 2022 Featured Release - The Infinite Edition

So just like that we find that a new month is upon us which of course means that we’ll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we’re asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our chosen releases so don’t be shy.

The featured release for April 2022 has been selected by Saxy S (me!) with 2016's Odyssey to the West by the band Slice the Cake. After a couple of deathcore releases were included in other clan features in the last few months, I wanted to explore a progressive side of the genre with an emphasis on poetry, similar to La Dispute or more recently Foxtails in hardcore punk. It will be fascinating to see how well this translates to progressive death metal.

https://metal.academy/releases/4153

Let me just say up front that this is a release of high quality. I'd never heard of Slice The Cake prior to Saxy nominating this record for feature status but in hindsight this surprises me somewhat because they've got class flowing freely from every orifice. The band is essentially made up of a trio of talented individuals from all around the globe who have managed to produce an astoundingly ambitious & free-flowing record under the circumstances. Apparently it was recorded well before the release date too & was left to sit on the shelf for a number of years after the vocalist & the bass player & main song-writer had a major falling out. That's even more interesting because it's hard to imagine any of the band members not wanting to have this album hit some ear drums post-haste given the general professionalism in the composition & execution.

"Odyssey To The West" is generally touted as being a progressive deathcore record & that's a pretty apt description however it's worth knowing that the progressive metal portion outweighs the deathcore one fairly comfortably with the structures of both the songs & the riffs being far more ambitious than your average deathcore exponents can generally muster & the scope & variety of territory that's covered being a lot more impressive too. There are several vocal styles employed across the tracklisting ranging from spoken word to violent deathcore grunts & screams. There's clearly been an effort made to make a lot of the cleaner stuff sound a little bit unhinged & insane & it often reminds me of Korn's Jonathan Davis in this regard. It's also interesting that the RYM band page indicates that the drumming is programmed but if that's the case then I never would have picked it. It would have to have been a monumental effort to sit down & program the whole record beat by beat. I love the guitar solos which have clearly been influenced by Dream Theater's John Petrucci i.e. my all-time favourite lead guitarist. There's a djenty element to many of the riffs that's done extremely well too with the more complex rhythms being executed with the utmost ease & sounding far smoother than they would appear on paper.

It's hard to be critical of the consistency displayed across the fifteen tracks included as there are no genuinely weak moments. I definitely think the two cleaner balladish tracks are the weaker of the bunch although I also wouldn't argue with their inclusion as the album really needed them to break it up a bit given the lengthy 77 minute run time & that's the major weakness of "Odyssey To The West" in my opinion. Despite the undeiable quality of the material, the run time is simply too long which takes the edge off the whole thing a little bit during the back end of the record due to the listener's inability to take in this amount of complexity in one sitting & it subsequently tends to wash over you without a lot sticking during the first listen. For this reason, multiple listens are an absolute must in order to fully grasp the album as a piece of art.

Given the time though, "Odyssey To The West" has become one of the more impressive examples of the progressive deathcore sound. It doesn't quite reach the heights of The Contortionist's best work in my opinion but I'd probably take Slice The Cake over Born Of Osiris or After The Burial who don't have the same level of artistic credibility in my experience. Slice The Cake offer something a little bit different with musicality given as much focus as technicality & have succeeded in creating an intriguing & satisfying piece of work that will no doubt appeal to fans of the bands I've just mentioned.

4/5

Yeah, I'm glad I found this one. 

At the end of the day, what I appreciate the most out of this album is how well it all flows together. Despite it's length being a big downside and consistently losing my interest during the final third, there is a special attention to detail with songs ebbing and flowing gracefully between atmospheric post-metal, technical death metal and djent-y breakdowns. The spoken word poetry is complimented by some strong instrumental motifs and phrases, but is more than capable of holding its own when the main melody is in the vocal line. This is a journey I'm willing to venture on again.

8/10

It's very hard to believe that Slice The Cake aren't metal enough to be listed on Metal Archives. Have they just never gotten around to adding them or is it the association with -core that's the issue? I dunno but this is quite obviously a metal record & a pretty fucking heavy one too.

When I was listening to the April Infinite playlist, I tried looking up some of those bands in Metal Archives, and not only is Slice the Cake not there but also Earthside. Metal Archives seems to have an issue with some progressive metal bands, not accepting bands that are closer to rock, hardcore, or even djent. That's why we're unable to find bands like The Contortionist, Born of Osiris, and Between the Buried and Me in that site, and they only accepted Meshuggah because of their tech-thrash debut Contradictions Collapse. Unbelievable!

I did my review, here's its summary:

Odyssey to the West is the kind of album that progressive deathcore experts would have a listening marathon. That said, the deathcore aspect is a bit of a struggle. Slice the Cake's massive offering pleased many fans of the style and genre and gained the band great exposure. Though composer Jack Richardson had his own plan for the release that got foiled when it came out early and that resulted in the band splitting up for a few years. Setting that ordeal aside, this is worth listening to if you're up to 4 multi-track epics and 4 singular tracks, ranging from soft melody with emotional poetry to fast aggressive rhythm with growls of frustration. And when it's all over, you might just feel up to repeating this journey again. However, with some flaws around, it still doesn't peak total interest in this band for me. Nonetheless, this heavy theatrical progressive/melodic deathcore journey is practically BTBAM's The Parallax II: Future Sequence on steroids. Only the most adventurous can reach the heart of this odyssey!

4/5