Review by Saxy S for Slice the Cake - Odyssey to the West (2016)

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.