Slice the Cake - Odyssey to the West (2016)^{Release ID: 4153}

A couple of months ago I reviewed an album by the deathcore band Impending Doom and made an offhand remark about the genre being littered around the time with disposable that had no idea how to write decent songs. The trouble with deathcore as a genre being that it combined the sporadic nature of technical death metal with the pummeling slow breakdowns of metalcore and together they never truly fit well together in my opinion. Well progressive deathcore does exist and consistently shows that these styles can be executed well together; whether it be from giants like After the Burial and The Contortionist, or relatively smaller acts like Slice the Cake.

Okay, awful band name aside, Odyssey to the West is a very good piece of progressive death metal. My initial impressions upon hearing songs like "Unending Waltz" and the opener "The Razor's Edge" gave me the feeling of a poetic experience that was similar to the post-hardcore tendencies of La Dispute,  meaning that the lead instrumentals would have to do much of the heavy lifting. Well it turns out that Slice the Cake knows how to write vocal melodies as well, with the ballads "Pieces of Ruins" and "Destiny's Fool" having some great motifs and ideas, albeit lacking in some of the growth that is missing on other tracks; growth that can be fully realized on "The City of Destruction" and "The Lantern". It shows off the bands diversity and also impressive that they can pull them both off with this high level of quality.

The word of the day as is always the case when dealing with breakdown heavy music such as this is "connectivity". Far too often hardcore acts write two ideas that have no connection, whether it be through similar tempos, key changes, or melodic/harmonic motifs. I would say, in general, Slice the Cake do not have this problem. "The God of Destruction" begins with a tech-death rump, but the breakdown is introduced through the dramatic drop off in technical proficiency in the percussion instead of full on djent inspired rhythmic passages in the guitar. "The Horned God" serves as the middle of a three part suite and is the most technical of the trio. It's shorter runtime compliments the longer outer tracks and even does enough to feel like it connects the entire suite together in a fascinating way.

But that leads into the biggest issue with Odyssey to the West as a whole: it's length. This album runs at a brisk 77 minutes with four (!) of these suites, with "Ash and Rust" comfortably running the longest. When taken in a vacuum, these suits are very well done with enough variety between the movements/parts to keep the listeners attention throughout. However, I would be lying if didn't say that I started getting quite tired during the final suite, and hearing many of the same motifs regurgitated from other parts of the album. It really is the Opeth problem of writing 10+ minute just for the hell of it, but on a grander scale.  Perhaps this could have been ratified through the removal of the straight ballads, because this album has plenty of down time on its own.

Odyssey to the West is an endearing listen that's for sure. I'm not even sure how well this will appeal to deathcore fans considering how little foundational deathcore is actually on display here. But if you even give this record a little piece of your attention, you can find a lot of musicianship and quality here.

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.