re: The thread dying.
I have to admit I was a little disinterested upon learning that, after a 2019 album, we’d only be travelling back a year to dig into a release. I may or may not be alone in this, I don’t know, but modern-ish releases don’t really interest me as much as, let’s say, something from the 1980’s I’ve passed by in all my years of heavy metal listening. That fact coupled with my wildly varying work schedule has led to my absence from this thread. I don’t really have anything to apologize for; I wrote atleast semi-detailed write-ups for the past 3 albums and engaged in discussion of said albums. Maybe this thread isn’t for everyone, or maybe everyone ran out of time, I do not know.
After Black Wizard’s outburst I was a little hesitant to jump back in here. I understand he doesn’t want this thread to die (on his album after all), and I understand, but shit happens. I said I’d listen to it so here I am now.
re: Purest of Pain - Solipsis
That John Arch album kinda blew. Nothing off it captured my ear and the discussion around it was mute at best. It seemed people in this thread just aren’t as captivated by the discussion of modern heavy metal as they were by the discussion of 80’s metal titans donning the hairspray or great thrash and power releases of the 90’s. Oh well.
Some pre-listen thoughts: It appears that this is melodeath. I don’t like melodeath. I’ve never been gravitated towards it. Give my Dismember, Malevolent Creation, or even Unleashed over pinch harmonics and clean singing in my death metal any day of the week. That being said, I have recently checked out Arch Enemy’s latest offering (my first experience listening to a full album of theirs) and it was quite good. I even liked about half of the songs off it! So, there is hope for this album. But what’s this, the thread says the album is middle of the road. Seeing as you guys thought that John Arch album was ‘a little above middle of the road’, I’m not all too excited for this release.
But like I said, there is hope.
My post-listen thoughts: If you really don’t want to listen to this album, I’m going to try to be as concise with my thoughts as I can with how I feel about this album. Hopefully, this will give a good indication of how you’ll feel about this album when listening to it and if you’ll enjoy it or not.
Immediately after I listen to an album from this thread for the first time, I ask myself: If I had not listened to this album, then would I have missed anything important? The answer with this album, quite surprisingly, is Yes. Despite the majority of the points I’m going to bring up regarding this album being negative, I had a good time overall throughout the release. It is engaging (most of the time) and rather fun. Its runtime, as with most heavy metal albums unfortunately, works against it. Solipsis is a 50 minute affair that most certainly feels like 50 minutes, maybe even a touch longer.
I have said it before and I will say it again: If your album is going over 30 (I’ll be generous and say 35 now that I think about it) minutes, it better have a good reason to go on for that long. Purest of Pain on Solipsis, through their own brand of moving Melodeath/Metalcore, almost find a good reason. Alright, I need to get this point out of the way before I begin: I’d like to whack every member of every metalcore band on the head for overusing breakdowns. There is too much of a good thing, that much is true in life. I remember where I was the first time I heard the breakdown in Ironbound from Overkill. My jaw was on the floor. Damn, that’s a good breakdown, and perfectly placed too! You gotta let your song get its footing first before placing a breakdown. It’s like when you cook a good steak, you gotta give that sucker some more time to cook AFTER its been taken off the heat before you can eat it.
A breakdown is effective when it’s used sparingly and when it still manages to catch you off guard even when you know it’s coming. Taste the Poison by Napalm Death is another breakdown where I remember where I was when I heard it for the first time. It was so poignant and pulsating. I wanted to move immediately upon hearing it; I wanted to rip everything that was hanging up on the walls off and stomp around like I had never stomped around before. I wanted to move and move wildly. Metalcore bands (and Purest of Pain certainly has metalcore elements!) don’t get this. Have you ever seen a horror movie and groaned at every crappy jumpscare because you knew when they were coming and they were the same jumpscares everytime? Solipsis is like that, but I’ll be fair and say that not every breakdown totally bored me.
So yes, I don’t listen to metalcore. Purest of Pain is a band that falls into a weird class. Calling them death metal is a little blasphemous, but calling them deathcore is too harsh. The metalcore is there for sure, but I feel like their death metal elements and their metalcore elements never truly merge into one unit. Purest of Pain does a good job of keeping them separate. This creates a welcome dissonance in their sound. Speaking of their sound, I also appreciated the hardcore elements strewn throughout Solipsis. The hardcore elements were at their most prominent in the (true) opening tracks of Truth-Seeker and Vessels. I call them true opening tracks because the first track, The Pragmatic, is a little opening throw away ditty. The upcoming interlude Sleep of Reason and the ending bit titled THE END (most metalcore bands don’t make it through public school so cut them some slack) can be chucked out too. Utterly pointless.
The more hardcore tinged elements that appeared in the album’s opening minutes pretty much take the backburner to the more ‘epic feeling’ melodeath moments of this album’s mid and ending sections. Momentum is a good example of this. Even though I feel like it drags halfway in, we do get to see Purest of Pain progress their sound and bring out some melodies that exude this melancholy, introspective, maybe even shoegaze like feeling. Despite all this, Momentum is actually and quite surprisingly where I lost a bit of interest in the album. Momentum is where this album starts to feel long. It doesn’t pick back up until Terra Nil. Tidebreaker and Trial & Reason (two tracks that, along with the unabashedly metalcore Crown of Worms and the two yet unmentioned E.M.D.R. and The Solipsis) represent the worst the album has to offer. They actually drag on forever and they’re too breakdown centric. Just cut this filler out and you have a decently engaging and rather fun hardcore infused melodeath experience. The riffs in the good tracks bob and weave along and have a good groove and feel to them. The filler tracks present (a little less than half of the whole experience) however, never find a good enough footing to feel engaging and vibrant.
Terra Nil is where my interest in this album was re-piqued. It features the talents of one Sam C.A., but I can’t find anything out about this guy through online searches (maybe
@Black Wizard can help me out on this one). I don’t even think I could find him on The Metal Archives. I don’t know who he is or what he does, but Terra Nil is quite exceptional. It takes its runtime and makes it work for the song. It’s epic and has a good dynamic between its various sections. It balances the more breakdown happy parts with the substantial melodeath sequences. Well done. The ending fares well save for some gripes I had with the breakdown filled filler messes of E.M.D.R. and the heavily groan inducing The Solipsist.
Noctambulist, which immediately follows Terra Nil. keeps the momentum up and features an effective breakdown after a so-so clean spoken word bit. Phantom Limb is another song featured in the album’s closing moments, and I shouldn’t like it, but I do. It is chocked full of breakdowns and other metalcore pitfalls, but it carries a menacing tone and executes everything surprisingly well. Good stuff on those two, I wish the whole album carried its songs that well.
About halfway into this album, I actually took an in depth look at the cover art. Well, there’s not much to look at really. I guess this is where the budget truly fell through for this thing. It’s lame. It just looks like a 15 year old (again, these guys probably didn’t finish public school, metalcore band and all that) half assed an art project for school in photoshop the morning of the project’s due date.
So, what would you have missed if you didn’t listen to this album? I’d say, you’d miss an often juvenile melodeath or metalcore act have some fun on their debut album with some quite interesting melodies and maybe not so well placed breakdowns. I’m gonna go back to this one, even with all the bad chucked in it, I found it to be enjoyable (and I had a lot to say about it!).
@LooseCannon has the next category been announced yet? I know discussion for this album hasn’t come to a close, no not yet, but I am curious so I can begin thinking of my nomination.
