[avatar =”Mosh” size=”50″ align=”left” /]A cracking British band who should be on your list to check out by now are Sylosis. After a good few tours and releases, they’re onto album number four (plus an EP or two along the way!).
Dormant Heart is a wonderfully varied package with one thing in common – very heavy tunes. Even between the first two tracks, “Where The Wolves Come To Die” and “Victims and Pawns”, there are a huge number of stylistic differences. The former is very slow and heavy, whereas the latter has many fast breaks around headcrushing ponderous segments.
The title track has an element of tech or industrial about it, mixed with some classic thrash, particularly in the intro. The pace keeps up for almost the entire five minute runtime, though melodic guitar breaks ride over the constantly battering drums an harsh vocals. A darkly atmospheric sidestep breaks the track in two towards the end, and this one track goes to show how hard it is to put Sylosis into a single genre.
“To Build a Tomb” manages to be both haunting and rousing, “Overthrown” has the best intro on the album (don’t listen to while driving unless you want to get stopped for speeding), “Leech” is wonderfully grand in scale, “Servitude” is more of a chugger than a thrasher…
Track of the album, for me, is “Harm”. I can’t quite pinpoint why and I think this is once again due to the huge variety of styles present in the arrangement. It’s heavy, catchy, fast, has a great fist-punching bridge and great flurried guitar solos.
Oh, if you think the first eleven tracks are good, wait until you hit closer “Qiescent”. You think the album has thrown everything at you it can in of variety and then this nine-minute opus hits you.
Sylosis are a great and under-rated band, and it’s criminal that a group churning out something as good as Dormant Heart aren’t on everyone’s playlist. Go see them live as well. I’ve caught them in a couple of slots and they really know how to take charge of a stage.
Straddling so many genres, if Sylosis were a living creature it would need to be a spider with extra legs. Give the album a listen first if you have to (it’s streaming on the Nuclear Blast site right now), but as long as your tastes run to the heavier end it’s doubtful this album will disappoint.
Dormant Heart is released on January 16th (or 13th or 23rd or 12th… depending on which bit of promotional literature you read!)
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