Veil of Maya-[id]

Veil of Maya is probably one of the most technical deathcore bands I’ve heard yet. I never fully appreciated them until I saw them live a couple weeks ago at the 2010 Summer Slaughter tour. I was surprised to see that their bassist’s guitar had seven strings! That isn’t something you would normally see in a deathcore band. I was just outside the venue by some merchandise stands chatting with my friends and eating a mini pizza (it was around lunchtime). I was sort of listening to them as background music, and while I was inside throwing my pizza away, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing; I had to stay and watch this. Pretty soon I was enjoying myself so much I was in the pit within a few minutes (even though I was freaking tired). I was impressed by them and bought their new album, [id], while I was there.

Veil of Maya’s sound is very abstract. The guitarists play a lot of out of tune chords to give the sound an edge. The vocalist is one of those deathcore vocalists that mainly growls, and screams every once in a while (like whitechapel, carnifex, and suffokate). Before I saw them, I had their first demo that I got when a friend gave it to me about a year after they released it. Now that I’ve heard this, I’d say that they are astonishing compared to the demo. Their bassist has great technical skills, and I can tell that he uses every string on his instrument. The drummer plays a lot of abstract tempos and uses a lot of auxiliary drumming items. I would like to note that I’m not extra critical on how metal vocalists sound because it’s very hard to do (I know firsthand that it’s difficult). But I would like to say that the vocalist’s scream could use to be worked on a bit because it’s a bit scratchy sounding, which bothers me a bit.

There are several interludes in the album. The first “song”, which is the intro track, really gives you an idea of what you’re about to listen to. In the next song, the guitarist plays a really weird chord that sounds really cool to give the song some edge. Believe it or not, in deathcore, I am not easily impressed when it comes to breakdowns. They have to be really good, tight, on-beat, and creative to impress me, and honestly, none of these breakdowns impress me (I’m not saying they’re bad at all, they’re just not quite good enough for me). Overall, the band’s performance and this album have impressed me. I would recommend this to metalcore and deathcore fans, and of course, to anyone who loves discovering new music. This album gets 16/20.