Quell: One Man's Struggle With the English Language

Quell is a six-piece metalcore band from North Carolina, that plays in a busy, technical style that is similar to The Dillinger Escape Plan and Into the Moat. Featuring three guitar players, these guys pummel the listener with raging screams, intricate & heavy riffs, wild solo fills, and pounding rhythms. While for the most part there's no letting up on these ten tracks, its on a song like "Mindset of the Average" that this band shows off their real skills, as they mix thrash, death metal, hardcore, jazz, and atmospheric prog rock all in one 5-minute piece. There's plenty of crunchy riffing on "Requiem for Purity" (as well as some brutal screams) to go along with the dizzying lead melodies, and if you really want your head to spin, check out the intricate stop-start madness on 'The Tedious Relay of Sand and the Pendulum and/or the Hourglass", a song that would fit right in on any album by The Dillinger Escape Plan. The band comes close to Mastodon intensity and heaviness on the untitled and instrumental ninth track (which also includes some haunting piano work), and gets all moody on the atmospheric & doomy "Circumventing Language Barriers By Speaking Louder", the CD's longest song at nearly 8-minutes. This is a pretty enjoyable album if you like technical metalcore, with loads of intricate and heavy guitar work. As with DEP and bands of that nature, the vocals here may or not be to your liking, but if you can get used to the non-stop barrage of screams, there's chops galore on this one for anyone into complex metal music.

Track Listing
1) The Start of an Unfinished Chain Reaction
2) Final Transaction and End Balance
3) Pants Ain't Tight, Belt Ain't White, You've Got to Learn About Rock 'n' Roll
4) –
5) Mindset of the Average (person/culture/nation/father)
6) Requiem for Purity
7) The Tedious Relay of Sand and the Pendulum and /or Hourglass
8) Purge and Consolidate
9) –
10) Circumventing Language Barriers By Speaking Louder

Added: May 19th 2005
Reviewer: Pete Pardo
Score:
Related Link: Goodfellow Records
Hits: 3070
Language: english

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