Review Summary: A progressive metal gem with a truly "Symbolic" sound.
Not knowing about “Illogicist” should be considered a sin, but it’s fairly reasonable why it’s not because the Bible doesn’t make any sense. To be honest I didn’t know about this band either until they released this progressive metal gem called “The Unconsciousness of Living” which no one seemed to notice. That is a shame it really is. But I don’t blame you. There is a lot of great bands out there (duh) but this one
really stands out from the other garbage that you might find when you scan through the internet or your local album store.
Borrowing the sound from Death’s “Symbolic and forward era” “The Unconsciousness of Living” might be considered a “Death” clone, but I hardly think so (I’m going to refer to “Death” a lot so this is important).
The first song of this album called “Ghost Of Unconsciousness” is pretty much the “main” track because the name refers to the name of the album and because of the fact it’s arguably the best track on the entire CD. The third riff on this song (which appears around 35 seconds) has a strong resemblance to the song “Without Judgment” from “Symbolic”. It’s not a complete ripoff, but you can definitely hear a big likeness. A lot of people might think: This is just a stupid copy of Death! But for me that’s a good thing since "Without Judgment" is in my opinion one of Death’s best tracks. The vocals are also similar to Chuck’s voice which also is a good thing. That one riff from “Ghost Of Unconsciousness” is just of course only one of many things that this band have “loaned” from “Death”, but it’s the total sound and atmosphere which was taken from “Death“ and remastered in “The Unconsciousness of Living”.
Overall “The Unconsciousness of Living” features great guitar riffs plus solos and a heavy pronounced bassline. The drum work is also outstanding with complex patterns and it’s just really fast and epic in general. The vocals as I stated before are also very good. Not as strong as the other components, but good nonetheless. None of the songs gets boring after a couple of listens which provides the album with a replay value that is out of this world.
So far I have only praised the album so why not give it a 5/5? That’s because there really is nothing bad to say about it, but as expected it’s not a death metal masterpiece that will elevate the entire genre too a new level. Even so it’s a fantastic album that is worth checking out.
