Labels: Translation Loss
Review by: Alex Deller
Enjoyed East Of The Wall’s last record, ‘The Apologist’, a lot. It hit this really interesting place between expansive post-metal and something proggier, and was tasty enough that I sucked up insane US shipping prices in order to secure a vinyl copy. This one, too, is good. That good? I’m still not sure, even after a few months of listening. It’s more ambitious, certainly. The mix of fluid grooves, tricksy rhythms and virtuoso musicianship is seamless to the point that in any one 15-second snippet I can variously be thinking of Isis, Coalesce, Cynic, Tool circa ‘Lateralus’, Meshuggah or Joe Satriani. It’s all in there: regimented, precise and whirring giddily like some obscenely complicated clockwork folly. I think it might be the vocals that stop me fully engaging. Because while the clean, greasy tones provides some colour to offset the monochrome roars I think they perhaps go too far, dominating proceedings and offsetting the album’s otherwise delicate balance. This isn’t a major knock, but it’s a criticism all the same. One that means I tend not to sit down to digest ‘Redaction Artifacts’ all in one sitting, but rather two or three smaller morsels at a time. One, also, that means I most likely won’t pony up twenty bux for US shipping and will stick instead with mere digital consumption.