Review: Vibrant hybridization of jazz and death metal has worked its way into the canon of the genre, a standard which Red Tide work against by incorporating death metal styles into what is fundamentally a speed metal/jazz hybrid playing very studiously into modern pop and jazz fusion lines of study. Diligent attention to musicianship and the tactics of composition make this a musically enjoyable listen in the sense that each piece works well as an example of what it is; what it cannot do is tame the schizophrenia of music unsure of where to go.
Although each element of the protocol gracefully folds into the next and the many diverse pieces of its assembly come together with remarkably clever structural turnarounds and rhythmic containers, the overall inattention here comes in what this music actually has to say, beyond slashing out some Pantera/Meshuggah style enhanced speed metal riffing alternating with jazz fusion melodic offsets riffs in the context of what is essentially a pop song with riffs expressed in death metal's styles of rhythm and technique. Mostly the framework for the music is rock or heavy metal, with a variation between death metal and clean vocals emphasizing that aspect in contrast to the smooth and open jazzy portions of each song or the vengeful choruses taken out of a progressive death metal songbook.
1. Intro / Vicious Circle
2. Overcome
3. Scarred
4. Submission
5. Composition No. 25
6. Shallow
7. Numbed Emotions
8. Let the Lotus Feet Fly
Length: 36:41
Brilliant aspects to watch prosper in abundance at the tactical level, where a group of professional musicians make easy looking work of integrating complex pieces with a diversity of texture and multiplexed arrangements, and in the degree of refinement given to the instrumentalism; the intentionality of each piece is a striking expression of profundity, somehow at a loss in music that is so disorganized in central principle. Throwbacks to Atheist and Cynic cluster around revenants of the most classic death style in this multifaceted meal of death metal and fusion jazz, a mixture that will probably take them farther than other visible influences Candiria and Man is the Bastard, who manage nowhere so smooth an incarnation.