Time Signature
The show...
Genre: hard rock / modern metal / etc.
Sometimes you get shades of grey in metal, and sometimes you get a full palette of colors. I like both approaches, but, with this, album you defintely get the full palette, as Triton Devs explore many different metal genres on this album ranging from hard rock and traditional metal over power metal and gothic metal to extreme metal. SO, yeah, we're embarking on a musical journey of sorts.
After a dark instrumental in the form of 'Black Angel', 'Another Round' which combines musical Gothicism with uplifting hard rock catchiness kicks in. I like this track, but I have some problems with the following one. While 'This Summer Day' has a lot of qualities to it (I like the funky feel it has), I don't like the electronica elements that pop up - it's just a bit too cheesy for my taste. They remind me a bit too much of some of that god-awful music some of those dumb metalcore bands made in the 00s. 'The Light of Your Skin' is more of an AOR ballad with modern metal elements scattered throughout and it's actually pretty good. 'The Show' moves more in a hard rock direction, while 'Summer Day' and 'Magic Rainbow' are Satriani-esque instrumentals (I prefer the latter, but the former rocks too), and 'Higher' is a heavy groove-fest (unfortunetaly, it also features some electronica elements that don't sit well with me). 'Hell's Fest' and 'Metallus' are both enjoyable all out metal attacks.
In terms of musicianship and production, there really is nothing to complain about. The production is also very solid and more on the polished side of things but that is probably the best choice for an album like this. While I really like Eric Castiglia's clean vocals, which remind me a bit of Rob Moratti, I have to admit that I am not a fan of the more extreme metal oriented vocals that also occur on this album - probably because they are more on the metalcore side of things (I'm just too much of an old asshole to appreciate the contributions of metalcore and deathcore to the overall metal scene, I think).
Overall, Triton Devs' debut album is somewhat of a musical journey with a lot of diversity and variation. This means that, while there is a risk that there is the rist of there being elements on the album that might not appeal to you, there is an equal chance of there being elements that you will absolutely love.