The album starts off well - Do you Dream of Armageddon being a decent intro - though intros should've been left in 2012. Some of it was a little clumsy, but overall I didn't dislike it.
The second track comes in with a pretty generic djent riff but it's not objectively bad, which sort of sets the mood for the rest of the album. It's just.. like you've heard it before. I did find myself bobbing my head though. I don't have a lot of issues with this album but one major thing is I feel the mix is just too sterile. The quick EQ edit was honestly a game changer on this one for me and made it feel a lot more immersive.
Their sound has changed, but it should. Music evolves with the musician and they shouldn't try to confine themselves to anything in particular. The fans that think bands should never change are, quite simply, incorrect brats that live more in nostalgia than the currents of actual time. Some of the orchestrations and overall composition of this album are trying too hard to do more than they should, though that doesn't automatically write them off.
While this is not my favorite album they've put out, nor the second favorite, I enjoyed the experience of the album and will be returning to it, but it's not going to make it into my heavy rotation.
This album is as poetic as ever for TSC, with the lyrics touching on popular topics of love, the soul, and death. Nick’s vocals are shakey and emotional, and I’m loving their maturing sound, though it still sounds like them. It still feels familiar, like seeing an old friend from college a few years later.
Architecture - The start of this, especially for an album opener, is a bit abrasive but it quickly moves on from that. This goes on pretty hard and it’s clear The Spill Canvas wanted us to be swept up as quickly as possible in this album.
Firestorm - This is a kind of anxiety you feel in your chest. You get a sense of intimacy and dissonance that leaves you wanting more but in a way like you just experienced something for the first time and can’t stop.
Darkside - The vocals are really going experimental in this. I’m not sure how I feel about some of it, but most of it is stellar. Either way, this took the anxiety from Firestorm and turned it into making me want to dance.
Calendars - The instrumentation in this is like a moment in time, with hair whipping in the wind and drinking around a fire on the beach. It’s a hopeful love song.
Blueprints - Just as the hope of the last ends, Blueprints rips it apart with a subject matter that weighs heavily on those that have experienced loss. The instrumentation feels far away in places, and up close in others, as though it, too, is trying to overcome loss. All in all, this sounds and feels like this song is lying to itself because of its light energy.
Cost - Nathan Hussey joins TSC for this and it’s a brilliant pairing. I actually had to listen to this twice in a row because it’s got a complexity hidden behind a simple facade that I just couldn’t understand the first time around. This starts out small but fills so much space by the time it’s done.
Gallon - This, with a subject matter that honestly requires a trigger warning, sounds like youthful exuberance experiencing life for the first time, but we’re hearing Nick singing about ending his own. It’s another that sounds like it’s lying to itself. It made me feel uneasy.
Akathisia - This comes on a lot more aggressive and reflects further on Nick’s lyrics on the topic of self-loathing and the ideas of being a broken individual, and you can hear it in every corner of his voice.
Molecules Ft. Sherri Dupree-Bemis - This is the album’s slow breakaway. This is the quintessential ballad of love and it’s as powerful as it is folksy. Nick and Sherri’s voices really lend themselves to one another.
Conduit - All of the hints of big sound in previous were leading up to this where the swirling, writhing sound, explodes into the size of madness and becomes almost white noise. This is a beacon to the heavens, like a sign that you haven’t given up yet. It takes those songs about being broken earlier in the album and puts an unlimited endcap on them reaching out to the divine, even if it is a last shot. This is a call for help for a soul beyond repair.
This album was, well, exactly what you'd get if you took ADTR from 10 years ago and made them release an album with absolutely zero passion in it. The entire album felt hollow, like there was nothing there. I found myself wishing the album was over and I wasn't even half way through. I found it extremely difficult to make my way through to the end in order to give it a fair rating.