Code For Silence: Eyes World Shut

Eyes World Shut is a confusing listen. With so many divergent styles plastered across the ten tracks, it feels like a cold, dry, academic study of a host of metal sub-genres, or like a compilation album of ten different bands. There are three consistencies across the album. First, the uber-production is so squeaky clean, to hold it up to the light would blind. Second, the performances are all phenomenal. And third, Code For Silence have one setting: full. With every instrument cranked all the way up to eleven, even in the melodic and clean passages, there's little room to breathe. With an abundance of chugging riffs, catchy riffs, pummelling riffs, grooving riffs, the occasional technical riff, brick wall chords, clean passages, and all the other stuff you'd expect from a melodeath band, when the smoke occasionally clears, there's plenty of melody but again, it soon gives way to hyper-muscular riffs and god-damn-it-I-mean-it-so-much-it-hurts-right-down-to-my-hammer-smashed-nutsack death metal vocals. The pop elements of 'Death Bringer' – the stuff of studio-structured boy bands – are no less than embarrassing in their pseudo-masculine posturing; the sax in the sentimental opening of 'Brothers' and the swinging 'The Art Of Being A Coward' is an interesting surprise as it tends towards the spazz jazz of Mr Bungle/Mike Patton but sounds like a feeble impersonation; the industrial dance of 'Neo-Synchronised Capone Dance' is in stark contrast to the death grunts of 'Release The Hounds' and compounds the confusion ever further. The riffs can be rhythmic and driving, as can most of the grooves, but after about two or three tracks, it's another heard-it-before / saw-it-coming album that, though well-produced and well-performed, provides very little in the way of originality.

Track Listing:

1. Rose Blossoms In Bloodred
2. Flashbacking One Night Stand
3. Death Bringer
4. Brothers
5. The Art Of Being A Coward
6. Eye For An Eye
7. Neo-Synchronized Capone Dance
8. Release The Hounds
9. Deathrace
10. On The Streets Of A Sleeping City

Added: October 19th 2012
Reviewer: Jason Guest
Score:
Related Link: Band Website
Hits: 2018
Language: english

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