The story is one of the subjugation and domination of the human race by a nefarious celestial presence. Planetary Duality is something akin to a concept album, though it is far from fully developed and, at thirty-five minutes, doesn’t manage the scope and scale for which its subject matter screams. This review will limit discussion of this to the statements just made and focus instead on the level of enjoyment this album offers and which aspects of it specifically lend to or detract from its appeal. The move will be framed as a vain/valiant attempt to distance themselves from the overloaded and brokedown -core bandwagon. As it stands, however, Planetary Duality is album that is escapes mediocrity only due to the inclusion of some interesting material and exemplary performances from the musicians.Some other reviews will say a lot about The Faceless’ previous -core leanings and make a big deal about this album’s movement away from that style and toward a stricter technical death metal approach. If the band increased the frequency of original ideas and made the songwriting more consistent, then they would become a force to be reckoned with. The biggest problem with Planetary Duality is that most of the ideas presented are not original, and have been done much better by bands such as Necrophagist and Death. The album's brevity and the even distribution of interesting songs just barely save Planetary Duality from becoming boring. By the end of the album, many of the ideas seem to be reused once or twice, and a lot of the songs blend together, despite the band's effort to add variety. Many of the riffs resort to rapidly strumming the same note over and over again rhythmically, leading to many predictable, unoriginal, and bland segments. However, the songwriting is very inconsistent. Also, The Faceless try to add variety to the album by splicing in the occasional clean solo, distorted vocal, or spacey piano, and these unconventional moments are the most memorable segments of the album. In addition, the Planetary Duality duo that ends the album ranks among the best technical death metal songs of the past decade. Much of the material, such as XenoChrist contains good songwriting, and is absolutely enthralling. However, the album's main strengths and weaknesses are displayed through the songwriting. However, the vocals are sadly generic, and are far less entertaining than the other instruments, and therefore are an evident downside. The singing is not poorly done in the least, and Michael Rydquist and Michael Keene, the vocalists, show great versatility as they alternate from growling to shrieking, and sometimes to computer-altered and even clean singing. Every instrument is played flawlessly and with blistering speed, with the exception of the vocals. From the tremolo-picked intro to album opener Prison Born and the majestic sweeps in Ancient Covenant, to the incredibly fast riffs of closer Planetary Duality II-A Prophecies Fruition, the band insists on pushing their impressive technical abilities to the very limits and almost never taking breaks. When listening to Planetary Duality, the first noticeable aspect of the music is the technicality. While this nascent band's music is not yet fully matured, it is still interesting and it definitely displays a band with much potential to become one of the future titans of technical death metal. The Faceless, one of the more interesting contemporary technical death metal bands, certainly falls into the latter category, as evidenced by their most recent album, Planetary Duality. Consequentially, their music was usually not a revelation or a giant leap forward for the genre, but rather a collection of enjoyable songs. On the other hand, some bands decided to take a fun, entertaining formula and stick with it. Bands such as Death and Edge of Sanity experimented with injecting death metal with progressive touches and melody. Atheist, for example, needed to add elements of jazz to their death metal sound in order to stay content with themselves. Some bands feel the need to constantly advance their music. Will it provide you with some fast, fun metal? Oh, hell yes. Review Summary: Will this album change your opinion of technical death metal? No.
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