The revolving door that is the Arsis lineup has stopped spinning long enough to craft an overwhelmingly fun album with a long and diverse track list.
A few big things to note before even listening to the main bulk of this album:
A few big things to note before even listening to the main bulk of this album:
- It includes the entire "Leper's Caress" EP that was released a while back.
- It includes a cover of "Sunglasses at Night." Cheezy, but rock on.
- Sick album art by Riddick, as per usual with Arsis.
Starve for the Devil was a bit odd for Arsis-- a departure into a semi-new realm on the verge of satire. Enjoyable, of course, but a bit different than the fast, furious and classically-tinged melo-death of Celebration of Guilt and We Are the Nightmare. Unwelcome is an excellent new release for the band in that it merges everything that James Malone has built up thus far.
It takes the best of previous Arsis releases, and uses them to craft 17 tracks which all slay with familiar elan. Celebration channeled raw emotion and grit into songs which slashed and cut with remarkable groove and precision-- not in the vein of hardcore music, but more in the style of dark prose written by Edgar Allen Poe wracked by torment. This can be found in Unwelcome; see Choking on Sand and Scornstar. The Nightmare album soared in a neo-classical sense, for it combined virtuous instrumentation and blistering technicality with artfully crafted solos and mood-setting intros and outros. It was a display of both musical bombast and discipline. These traits, too, can be found in Unwelcome; see the title track and Haunted, Fragile, Frozen. And lastly, Starve assembled Arsis' vision of hair metal riffery with over-the-top lyrics and showy whammy-laden solos. This brought an element of amusement and pure fun to their canon, previously not to be found. This is seamlessly integrated into Unwelcome: see Handbook for the Recently Deceased.
These elements only rarely seem at odds: the few less-thrilling moments on the album come when a song cannot decide how to proceed. This is rare, but does indeed throw off the otherwise-riveting kilter of the album. Additionally, there are a few moments of vocal weakness, where screams and roars struggle to overcome the music, but these minor shortcomings of Mr. Malone's can be easily overlooked, to be sure.
The album is a triumph. Any existing Arsis will enjoy it's extended length, for it traverses the band's well-crafted valleys of despair and peaks of intensity, without feeling rehashed. Yes a few lyrics motifs return: guilt, blindness, and an aura of mourn, but they again appear as if given new life, crowned upon the building blocks of Arsis' established library. Metalheads new to the band will instantly latch on in one way or another: the diverse composition provides myriad hooks, while the prodigal performance level will substantiate any budding interest.
Highly recommended.
