Clock Paradox - Egotheism

For those metal fans looking for a band that plays extreme technical death metal mixed with progressive elements I highly recommend Finland’s Clock Paradox. The musicianship is amazing on this album and gives a sense to the experience this band has over many other young upcoming metal acts. Clock Paradox’s album “Egotheism,” is a brilliant combination of death metal and progressive metal. These guys push the musical boundaries with some heavy technical riffs and brutal death metal vocals. Now the originality may be hard to justify because I can here different elements from all kinds of metal genres. The area that separates Clock paradox from the rest of the other the other progressive technical death metal bands is that they focus on creating unique time changes. The rhythms and tempos are very distinctive giving each song a unique atmosphere.

I think the vocals work well with the intense parts, but I am not a huge fan of constant growls. However, I understand the vocal style is trying to mix with the progressive technical instruments and give this album a huge punch. Still after a couple songs the growling starts loses it’s effect.  If you are a guitar player and enjoy intense technical riffs then this album is going to blow you away. I find the riffs and leads to be well thought out with high precision. The guitar tone is nicely captured in each recording and the production quality is awesome. Without question the album is extremely well produced. The instruments are record so that not one sounds louder than the other. Also, the distortion levels for the guitar and bass are set to wear the vocals don’t get drowned out. For time length the songs are fairly long and seem longer due to the changing time signatures along with the diverse rhythms. Some tracks that I recommend are “The God Complex,” “Origo,” and “Paradigm.” On the song “The God Complex,” the lead guitar piece towards the end catches my attention and has a wicked tone. I enjoy long complex songs that go through a variety of sound changes. “Paradigm” is my kind of song because the overall sound is extremely heavy and slows down to create a powerful emotional appeal. The vocals also mellow out for a bit and I like the singer’s voice best in this song. He has an amazing range that I did not hear on the earlier tracks. In the end “Paradigm” was the song that stuck out and showed me the outstanding musicianship that each band member contributes.

My final thought’s on “Egotheism” are that the blending technical death metal and progressive metal can create great musical structures. The sound created by Clock Paradox is heavy and impressively technical. As a huge fan of Progressive metal and death metal I enjoyed hearing a band bring the two genres together to make a solid metal release. In reality this has been done by numerous bands, but I think Clock Paradox found a way to step outside the box by coming up with unique time changes and a variety of rhythms. The album is well worth checking out and hopefully more American metal bands follow this style of music. I am glad Clock Paradox can come up with progressive death metal riffs that don’t sound like the usual young American metal acts that think breaks downs are the only way to add rhythm changes in songs. Maybe Clock Paradox needs to come to the states and play some live shows to give people ideas of how to create all around great progressive death metal.

[embed]

  1. Virtual Compassion
  2. In the Flesh
  3. Machine Mind
  4. Cleansing Self
  5. The God Complex
  6. Void
  7. Origo
  8. Paradigm