My motives for getting hold of this album were two fold, firstly I have been interested in what the band sounds like but secondly and more importantly the band is playing with The Ocean later this year so I wanted to hear what the band sounds like. I actually listened to the entire back catalogue before giving this a go, and it’s clear that Textures sole intention is to fuck with your auditory senses so that you don’t know what the fuck is going to happen next.
Granted this album has some of the newer djent styling that seems to be cropping up in technical metal. My main surprise overall is the vocal approach which is very similar to Devin on his more harmonic moments. This is admirably demonstrated on the opener “Arms Of The Sea” as the music is highly progressive without delving too deep into guitar mania and as many time changes and riffs as you can possibly cram into five minutes or so. The development musically is a cleaner approach vocally and less sporadic and tangential time changes, but that is not to say it is not complex, far from it. The percussion and drum work is damn impressive and makes each song come alive with case in point being “Black Horses Stampede” which is slower initially with a crunchy riff and from my point of view there are some similarities to The Ocean. The vocals adopt a harsh barking approach right before the song switches to a rock style, almost arena rock in some places.
The huge prog leanings of “Reaching Home” contrast with the heavier “Sanguine Draws The Oath”, but still utilising clean vocals to keep it fresh. There are huge reminders that this album has touches of old Devin material especially on the more surreal progressive stuff, such as on “Singularity”. The bands focus on polyrhythmic guitar sections are melded with sweet melodic sections which create a good contrast between the harshness of the riffing style and the more atmospheric and experimental passages in all the songs. As with any albums of this nature it is the songwriting that focuses the listener and it is blatantly obvious that Textures want you to stop what you’re doing and give their albums100% attention to absorb and digest without interruption. There is a general atmosphere and ethos to “Dualism” that blends heavy guitar components with beautiful harmonies that are captured brilliantly in the closing song “Sketches From A Motionless Statue”. Very few albums can ever boats of having an essence that one can only experience by actually listening to it and “Dualism” is one of those albums. Exquisitely played metal.
http://www.myspace.com/textures
http://www.texturesband.com
Martin Harris
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