Sylosis – Monolith (2012) Review

Don’t be fooled by the boring, standard cover. This cover is the way to go.

Sylosis is another one of those bands that I have started listening to in the past few months, and is my most recent find. It may well be the best find of them all.

Sylosis are a thrash metal band at heart; with shredding riffs, prevalent drums and generally a fast tempo to their music. But their music also has elements of prog, which gives it an interesting extra layer. They’ve got the heaviness of someone like Lamb of God, some prog similar to the likes of, I don’t know… Mastodon. And the unrelenting energy of Feed the Rhino, or, maybe, As I Lay Dying at their peak. So, as you may have guessed, it’s pretty damn good listening.

Another great thing about the band is that they are British, because there aren’t all that much metal bands from around here – but that’s just a little thing.

Anyway, Monolith was the first Sylosis album I listened to, and I was introduced to the band by it in the best way possible. It exhibits deep, dark and heavy music. It has a deep texture with every instrument complementing each other, with the guitarist doing a fantastic job on the guitar and screaming like a madman over the top of it all — with one of my favourite growling voices I’ve heard. The album never goes too mad, never too crazy; it’s actually fairly conservative for an album in its genre, but that is one of the things I like most about it. There are fantastic guitar solos throughout and every song has a good dosage of prog to it; so you have to wait a bit through awesome build up sometimes. But when you have to wait in this album, it is never too long, and you know there’s gonna be an incredible crescendo of everything that’s great about the album by the end of the wait – maybe a catchy moment, an awesome riff or an amazing guitar solo.

More things great about this album are that every song is different from the one before it, and it explodes with innovation and variety throughout. And to add to the deepness of the album, there are awesome effects throughout and apparently it’s a concept album – which is cool.

Furthermore, the album is all played in the minor key, so it is indeed very dark. Which I like. A lot.

Every song on this album is fantastic in its own right, but there are some songs that are particularly brilliant; All is Not Well is knee-thumpingly heavy, catchy and with a riff at the heart of it, Out From Below is a prog/thrash fusion done to perfection and starts the album emphatically and What Dwells Within is one of the coolest songs I’ve heard, and I don’t quite know how to describe why. However, there is one song that isn’t as good as the rest: Enshrined. This is the last song on the album and just isn’t as good, and I think the thing with the 10 minute silence and an underwhelming hidden track at the end of it is just a bit pointless. Also, however much praise I give this album, it still isn’t perfect. But these are just little niggling flaws that aren’t really important. It’s an incredible album by an incredible band and I can’t stop listening to it. And I can imagine how good these guys are to see live. I’d just hope they play songs from this album in their gig.

Verdict:

Monolith is dark, deep and heavy, each to the highest degree, erupting with creativity and innovation. This is unique, different, bulging with quality and musical ability with one of the best roaring vocals I have ever heard in a crescendo of thrash metal done perfectly with an extra layer of prog and the fact that it is English. I can’t think of anything bad about it other than maybe it trails off a bit at the end…? But…

I can’t stop listening to this. And I don’t know if I will stop.

So I give it: 92/100.

– Speedy.