Dying for Life 2001

"Stuff as many technical riffs as you can into one song, add odd time signatures and frenzied drumming and have acrobatic vocals soar on top, and - viola - you have the type of music that Antithesis deliver on this album.

We are dealing with progressive metal here which draws on technical thrash metal and has a US power metal sensibility to is as well (which means - no cheese!). The riffage ranges from quasi-technical to veeeery technical, and each song contains numerous riffs and many changes in time and tempo, and thus the level of compositional complexity is very high. I mean, I already gave up keeping track of the riffs in the first track "Consequence" and when the second track "Soul of Ice" was over I thought I'd listened to five tracks and not just two (and both tracks are only around five minutes each).

Some tracks, like the two above-mentioned ones are more aggressive, while others like "Times of Trial", "Deceiver Within", and "Distanced" are slower, but no less complex -having complex structures and containing mind-boggling odd metered sections.

This is a really good progressive metal album of the more hard edged type without being extreme metal, and the many changes and riffs make for an interesting, but actually not too challenging, listen. Recommended to fans of the likes of Watchtower, Control Denied, Unleashed Power.

(review originally posted at metalmusicarchives.com)"