Sylosis – Monolith (2012)

Greatly improving on their already impressive 2011 release “Edge of the Earth”, today we have Sylosis and their latest album “Monolith”. In this eleven track beast of an album, the band further refines their killer ‘Melodic Thrash Metal’ sound with even better crafted songs and heaps of killer guitar riffs. The band’s mastermind Josh Middleton has done a great job in crafting a very unique sound that is familiar to Metal fans, but it is also completely different from everybody else in Metal.

Setting a melancholic mood with the opener “Out From Below”, Sylosis quickly delivers the usual dosage of Thrash Metal riffs that nicely transform into brilliant melodic passages, particularly the brilliant closing to this song. There are a few hints of ‘Modern Metal’ included in tracks like “Fear The World” and “What Dwells Within” that give the band a Gojira kind of edge, not bad, but maybe alarming in the future.

The magical Melodic riffing machine goes into full-march on the epic “Behind the Sun”. In this very intense track we particularly love how the song weaves back and forth between melodic sections and aggressive passages all perfectly encompassed by superb drumming and a killer tempo. In terms of melodic brilliance, “The River” has one of the most epic song closings we have heard in quite a while.

Our favorite track of this release is the excellent “Paradox”, a song that delivers excellent Thrash riffs and very aggressive vocals with a highly emotional conclusion. Playing perfectly with their strengths, Sylosis does a great job in hooking the listener with crushing riffs and then changing their songs direction into more melodic territories. Ending the release with the epic “Enshrined” the band blasts the usual intricate guitar work for around 7-8 minutes and after some minutes of silence we are treated to a very weird acoustic track that sounds a bit like Cynic. We can only hope the band does not move this way in the future.

In general, Sylosis has outdone itself with another well-crafted release that will resonate with fans of both Melodic Death Metal and Thrash Metal. The band has perfected their interesting style over the last two releases and with “Monolith” they deliver a nearly perfect product. Helped by a killer production behind them and excellent musicians, Sylosis is one of those bands that you will surely be hearing a lot about them in the future.

Release: October 9th, 2012

Genre: Melodic Death Metal / Thrash Metal

Country: UK