Label: Blood Fire Death
Date: October 28th, 2022
Five years after their latest release, debut album “Time in Coma”, Exessus launched brand new portion of thrash, groove and modern metal. From the very first music note, you can feel that Catalan guys love to play. The album is released on the tenth year anniversary. Nice occasion, but some might say only a few albums for a decade is not much.
“Synapse” contains 12 songs plus a bonus one, an extended version of “Paths”. Although the album length is over an hour, there is no sign of boredom at all. The album sounds like Sepultura from the thrash groove phase meets progressive sound. If you have so many sub genres involved, you can expect diversity. And diversity you will get. If you carefully listen to an album, you will notice that it goes in two directions. One is clearly progressive metal direction and the other is groove thrash. And if you listen to it more carefully, that difference is hiding in vocal performance the most. Listening to the album, you have an impression the guys can play any kind of metal they want to with no problem. Technically, guys are very well trained and vocals go from clean to aggressive with no effort at all.
First three songs are exactly what I expected from the Exessus. On the fourth – “Paths”, the band changes direction a bit and slows down. Here I would mention an outstanding guitar solo. “Strength” is a slower but aggressive piece, the same as the next one, “Inner Parasite”. The band clearly has a strong attitude. “Inner Parasite” drew my attention with amazing shredding and drumming the same as with the combining clean and aggressive vocals. The next one, “Singular”, has great rhythm and obeys with vocal diversity.
Ballads have never been my favorites, so no exception this time. “Voyager” and “Leaving” are just not my cup of tea, might be yours… But however, this is the proof that Exessus is a really quality band who can successfully flirt with different sub genres.
“Old Chains” brings the energy back! It leads to the “Notes of the Soul Pt. 2” which is logically sequel of the song from the previous release. An epic one, slow tempo song delivers a bit melancholy to the ears of the listeners but do not worry, it will speed up a bit and again amaze you with great guitar work. “Welcome to the Hole” will hit one more time perfectly for the album closure if you do not count the extended version of “Paths”, the song with the most beautiful melody.
The album was recorded at Amplifire Studio located in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. Art cover by Pau Pujadas “Raven”, although very scary at least for me with a huge problem with ornithophobia at least, has a great color palette.
Overall, this is a nice album to close the year 2022. All the best to Exessus in the future to come!
