Review Summary: Ambient, deep, and energetic new record from the Indianapolis band!
The Contortionist is just one of the bands that started in one genre, deathcore, and just couldn’t take it anymore, so they switched into a much more avant-garde sort of direction. The band’s first album, Exoplanet, is a raw and energetic death metal album that pushed the boundaries of death metal. It added a more spacy and atmospheric twist that drew fans in. Then afterword’s the band made Intrinsic, which was a huge flop with bad production and bad ideas put into a record, so the Indianapolis natives sought out to not only change their sound but to also explore a genre that most djent and metalcore bands at the time didn’t do. So, with their 3rd album Languages, the band went with a whole new approach by adding chilling synths and odd guitar riffs that feel something out of a stoner metal album, to take you on a philosophical journey through life. Now here we are with Clairvoyant and the band sticks to this sound, but improves on it tenfold, and adds again more long synth sounds and layers of guitar riffs.
The production is pristine. Each layer of sound plays together to make one intrinsic listen. The drums always hit just the right beat for the guitar to grove along with, and the vocals just feel so free and light-hearted.The guitars riffs always pair well with the chilling and low-key vocal performance by Mike Lessard. But there are still plenty of guitar solos that play with your emotions and add a bit of color to this very dismal feeling album. Songs like “Godspeed” and “The Center” just make my bones shiver. However, there is just something soothing about this album, whether it comes from the vocal delivery or the color synths, it just pairs so well.Every song has this lost feeling to them, but not lost as in location, but lost as in time. It makes you stop and think about life, how you are as a human being, and how the world is; makes you think about the time we are in now. The lyrics are something that is a little hard to grasp. The songs have a very poetic vibe to them. Every word just gracefully falls off the lips and you take hold of them to try and understand them. So there is a feeling that every song could mean something completely different for someone else than what it is for me. For me, this record is about peace, love, and prosperity. The ways that we should approach life and the ways that we should approach people. But, it also talks about solitude, loneliness, and grief. That there is a lot in this world we take for granted, that there is a lot if simplicity that we are missing today.
I wish that I could articulate how this record sounds, but there aren’t enough adjectives in the English language to express it. Argue with me in the comments if you hate this album! :)
