Phonebook Eater
Appearance Of Nothing is a new progressive metal band from Switzerland, quite an unusual place for metal music. Even though this is their second album, being their first released in 2008, “Wasted Time”, the band has received a lot of attention among the prog metal scene, being considered to be one of the best prog metal albums of this year. Maybe I’m losing a bit of my prog metal love, but I can’t agree with this statement: in fact, I was a bit disappointed, to my surprise.
“All The Gods Are Gone” is much pretty straight forward prog metal: heavy guitars, complex rhythms, with some power metal influences, rich and powerful sound, keyboards, fast-paced solos. There are some elements in this album that aren’t a rarity in this type of music, but still without being a distinctive and essential characteristic: the epic sounding melodies, the pretty frequent use of growl vocals, some techno/heavy synth use, some use of acoustic guitars and piano here and there for thickening the sound a little more. The production is probably the best thing about “All The Gods Are Gone”; almost perfect sound and great mixing, which are key principles of a good Progressive Metal record.
For your and my sake, I’m not even going to mention the lyrical content of the songs, since, for what I hear, it sounds pretty pathetic and corny to the extreme. Better just to focus on the music. The first part of the album isn’t my favorite; those first two songs have some pretty weak moments; however, the melodies can be pretty memorable at times. But the best part of this album is it’s the centre, with “Sweet enemy” and “Destination”, the two longest tracks. There are some great, bad-ass sounds and memorable melodies along pretty much both the songs. But the fifth track, “The Call Of Eve”, is my favorite, even though that heavy techno synth could turn many people off. But the musicians are at their top, the music is extremely enjoyable throughout the whole song. However, the last songs of the album pretty much make me cringe, especially “….I Said Silence”, the worst song of the album, some times it gets alsmot unbearable for me, because of the huge amount of cheese, which, I didn’t mention earlier, is kind of a distinctive trait of the album. Actually I don’t mind the last song, the instrumental “The Rise And Fall Of Nothing”, it definitely has its moments and it’s probably the most progressive song on the album, even though being paradoxically the shortest.
An album I enjoyed partially, I had more than a few issues with it. But I can see why people are liking this, maybe I’m getting a little tired of that epic metal sounding prog metal. Begging for some Dream Theater here.