Eclipse

Personnel: Brandon Butler (vocals); Marc Okubo (guitar); Sam Applebaum (drums).
Audio Mixer: Misha Mansoor.
Recording information: Bulb's Bedroom Studios; Keene Machine Studios.
Possessed of a malevolent fury and an almost mechanical precision, Veil of Maya take their sound to the next level on their fourth album, Eclipse. Produced and co-written by Misha Mansoor (also known as the guitar wizard responsible for Periphery), the pairing finds the two sides splitting the difference between their usual styles as Mansoor rounds out the band's sound with a more melodic approach while Veil of Maya push the producer into darker and heavier territory than the prog shredder's normal projects tend to tread. The end result of this marriage is an album that's probably Veil of Maya's most balanced and ambitious record to date. With its more progressive approach, the album doesn't suffer as badly from the "too many breakdown" syndrome that tends to plague deathcore albums, and while there's still plenty of choppy, syncopated guitar parts for listeners to puzzle out, the album doesn't feel like a collection of riffs meant to get you from one punishing breakdown to the next. All together, Eclipse is an album that fans of deathcore and stuff on the extreme progressive side of the metal spectrum will both be able to appreciate, and with its more varied and exciting approach, it's an album that anyone who has written off Veil of Maya in the past would do well to check out. ~ Gregory Heaney