The Breathing Process – Odyssey: (Un)Dead (2010)

Out of all the bands we have reviewed recently, The Breathing Process is by far the one that combines to most influences of different genres in their music. With a very impressive (but sometimes terrible) mixture of Black/Death/Gothic Metal with some Melodeath and even Metalcore-ish influences we get “Odyssey: (Un)Dead”.

After their very impressive debut album “In Waking: Divinity”, we could not expect anything less from this young American band, but we also got a bit disappointed at some points during this album. The band fails to mix their elements together and ends up sounding extremely chaotic and redundant in some places.

We must say that technically “Odyssey: (Un)Dead” it’s a pretty solid effort. And the guitar riffing for the most part is very balanced and well written. The combination of Black and Death Metal is the underlying foundation of this release, however the perfect atmospheres created by the synth are very eerie and transport the music into the Melo-Death or Symphonic Black Metal atmosphere. And since we are suckers for good synth arrangements, we totally dig this element.

The male vocals courtesy of John LaFreniere are pretty solid and very brutal. We really like the way they seamlessly switch between growls and BM shrieks. However the growls sometimes overwhelm the overall melody of the music by sounding too aggressive (yeah, we can’t believe we said that ourselves). The female vocals are pretty solid and while not ‘classical’ sounding, they provide a nice refreshing element into the mix.

One thing we noticed is that the album starts with 3-4 sluggish songs and ends up with another 3 sluggish songs. This is the main reason we did not give this album a better score, because out of 13 songs in the album we get only 6 good ones, and a bunch of fillers. But again, for a band that has such a rich sound, having 6 good songs is more than enough to make me buy this release.

In general, The Breathing Process is making a name for themselves. We would love to hear this band in a few years when they further tweak and perfect their sound. The band is close to being great and “Odyssey: (Un)Dead” has the songs to prove it, they just need to work more on their sound and song writing skills (no filler songs!).

Release: March 23, 2010

Country: USA