It's not like there isn't good contemporary metal out there...you just won't find it being played by Veil of Maya. Album reviews regularly don't get the occasion to tackle a pervasive problem in contemporary music, but the fact is, there's been a kind of dumbing down, both in musical ability and in the expectations and pallettes of listeners over many current genres. Every era of music starts with some sort of convert or innovation...and then is followed by a crowd of imitators. When I was coming up, metal music got kind of atheletic, spawning a whole flock of terrible-sounding players and singers, plainly playing scales or honking out the highest notes they could hit. A few ground-breaking acts who wanted to strip things down and get back to solid songwriting (Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins). Before they could make their point, the new phillistines were upon us. Suddenly, a whole flock of players who couldn't play and singers who couldn't sing were showing us they couldn't in fact write songs either, but the dumbed-down sound of it all won over a legion of listeners who in fact didn't have an ear for listening.
Modern metal has similar problems. A lot of bands description similar sounding riffs at a zillion decibels, reasoning that this will translate to 'big sound' on disc or tape. A fair estimate of the time, it plainly doesn't. The guitars come back homogenized and tiny, with drums sounding like muskrats break-dancing inside a cardboard box.
Which brings us to Veil of Maya's 'Eclipse'. While they find some spicy meters and breakneck turns on 'Punisher' and 'Vicious Circles', there is plainly not much I find in fact heavy here, so much as in fact thin and derivative of 9,000 other bands reasoning louder equals heavier. Lead croaker Brandon Butler does microscopic also get buried like a bad version of Alexi Leiho.
Even motor Head and Five Finger Death Punch can get a recording to breathe (though Five's vocals are just as derivative). Veil would do well to find a producer who can capture an in fact heavy sound (and encourage them to write in fact former riffs). And please, vocally, let's not regress any further. If you can't go and at least coming the intensity and power of a Rob Halford, Peter Steele, Devin Townsend or David Draiman...there's a good occasion you don't belong at the mic. It's that simple.
Until listeners demand a better product, Veil may continue to thrive, and the new phillistines will continue to be upon us. I'm in fact happy they found an audience, but they will also continue to sound as absurd as the other 9,000 bands trying to generate a similar (derivative) sound. All in all, buy a Strapping Young Lad album for something in fact heavy and original.
