Review by Saxy S for Faceless, The - Autotheism (2012)

I vividly remember seeing The Faceless perform live along with The HAARP Machine in St. Catherines, Ontario in 2013. And while I was mostly there to hear the opening act, I was familiar with The Faceless from their album Planetary Duality. I remember them playing "Accelerated Evolution" and liking what I heard that I had to go back home after and find their album that song was on. So, I actually saw this band play live before ever listening to one of their albums in full.

Anyways, here's Autotheism, one of the better albums to split the difference between the melodic side of progressive metal, and the more punishing insanity of technical death metal. This album is all over the place production wise. And most of it comes in the percussion. And it's a shame because it's also in the one place that I have consistently criticized tech death for: the bass drum. When this album gets locked into a double bass groove, or a technical section where guitar and drums are in unison, it gets very loud and messes with the mixing of the remainder of the performers.

Still, songs like "Accelerated Evolution", "Autotheist Movement III: Deconsecrate" and "Ten Billion Years" all sound quite good, even excellent. And of course, to fit my namesake, when the saxophone comes in during "Deconsecrate", I really enjoyed it. I wish that it could have been projected more; sometimes the sax gets buried underneath the guitar backgrounds.

Technical Death Metal is still not my thing, but I can appreciate when it is done well. And The Faceless do create very solid tech death that doesn't rely on blazing fast song structures to cover up for unfinished songwriting. Good stuff.