Review of Age of Silence - Acceleration

Singers. I loath them. More interesting metal bands have been ruined by singers than any other single aspect of metal. Again, that’s why I like singers that aren’t singers. Guttural, screeching, shouting vocalists are simply another percussion instrument added to the mix. They don’t offend the way a bad clean singer does.

Take the guy(s?) from Age of Silence. His monotonous droning style, while not at all troubled with the hated vibrato so many metal SINGers prefer, nevertheless makes it impossible to enjoy this album. He is not the only culprit by any means, but take out his wailing and you would be able to add at least a point to the musicianship and songwriting scores. He sort of reminds me of the clean vocalist from Dimmu Borgir, but not quite as dynamic. Which means he sucks, but not as dynamically. No passion, no soul, no strength. Just tedious and obnoxious singing.

This is placed on top of a band that maybe had something progressive to say, if I hadn’t heard a lot of progressive metal before. All the musicians are impeccable, and the core of the bass, drums and guitar make some very good music, if not terribly original. But there has to be a keyboardist, who has to play baroque piano melodies all over everything and has to be mixed up high so that you can’t ignore it. So the songs have to suffer and I have to give this thing a negative review.

And negative it is. This is a record I cannot recommend to the metalhead crowd, and I can’t even to the prog freaks. The singer is awful, the pianist is like tinfoil on a filling and the rest of the cd is just like a billion others. I suggest you avoid this one. And if you should ever happen across a guy singing clean vocals for a metal band, stab him in the throat with a turkey carver.

Release Details

Age of Silence

Acceleration

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