Eighteen Visions - Obsession (2004)^{Release ID: 19465}

Obsession is one of those "love it or hate it" kind of albums. You love it if you started your Eighteen Visions journey with this album, you hate it if you're a fan of the band's more metalcore material. As someone who aware of both the alt-metal of this album and the metalcore of their previous albums, I consider Obsession a fairly decent album. Not so strong, but better than Yesterday is Time Killed by some slight points.

The songs in Obsession are quite short, going for the radio-friendly track lengths of under 4 minutes. Also radio-friendly is the song structures that can sound repetitive. So do those tracks work out well? Let's give them a spin...

We have the strong title opener, as James Hart yells "obsession, desire, depression" repeatedly, leading into a crushing breakdown. Killer start, though I wish it was longer. Unlike "I Let Go" which has some unwanted Stone Temple Pilots-like clean singing. "Crushed" is a crushing standout. "This Time" is pretty great, though again I want to get that STP-ish singing out of my head. No disrespect to Scott Weiland, RIP...

Then we have "Tower of Snakes" with everything any 18V fan can ask for. Halfway through is one of the best headbanging breakdowns you can find from this band. After that is the happy-sappy "I Should Tell You" that would fit much better on the radio than a metal album. "Waiting for the Heavens" is another standout with effective vocals.

"Lost in a Dream" is more mellow with lots of clean singing, but it's still nicely heavy. "Bleed by Yourself" rocks out hard. "A Long Way Home" attempts to blend the band's earlier hardcore with more of those d*mn STP-infused vocals, with actually greater results than earlier tracks. Closing the album is the soft melodic piano ballad "Said and Done", which is fine but don't expect me to listen to that sh*t a lot.

Regardless of this less heavy sound and mundane verse-chorus structure, Obsession has some good moments. The album would, just like Vanity, be re-recorded for its 20th anniversary (excluding "Said and Done", whew!). Here's to hoping and not hoping for a re-recording of their 2006 self-titled album. Review for that one coming up shortly....

Favorites: "Obsession", "Crushed", "Tower of Snakes", "Waiting for the Heavens", "A Long Way Home"