In metal, it’s all too common to see new bands emerge where old ones have ceased. Like Megadeth spawning from Metallica, members of bands have a hard time hanging it up and will find a way to persist. In the case of The Faceless, a technical deathcore act that’s seen more member swaps than you can shake a stick at, it’s a delight to see three members of this band in present day within The Zenith Passage. When I first got into The Zenith Passage in 2016, only one of their members would make it to 2023’s Datalysium: Justin McKinney, who spent 2014-18 within The Faceless. Enter that band’s 2006- vocalist Derek Rydquist and bassist Brandon Giffin are now also in The Zenith Passage. As such, the formula for a natural follow-up of the 2008 all-timer should be nigh. So, how does Datalysium stack up?
In Datalysium, The Faceless fans are going to get what they want: Planetary Duality 2.0, in the best fashion possible. What this boils down to are blazing-fast guitar runs, the bass super high in the mix doing its own thing, a high BPM, monstrous low-range growls, solos, otherworldly synthesizers, all coming together to command headbanging and grooves that set a precedent a decade and a half ago and are still massively enjoyable now. Retaining this DNA that made The Faceless a genre staple in the late 2000s serves The Zenith Passage as more of a tribute to that time than anything; slipping into those old tech-death boots serves those fans right, but failing to innovate in any meaningful way. This isn’t necessarily bad; there’s no too much of a good thing for those who always preferred this era of The Faceless, but at this point, it becomes semantic to name this project The Zenith Passage if Datalysium can’t shake that familiar feeling from start to finish.
Straying from the obvious comparisons, Datalysium is still one hell of a record for those who didn’t have prior experience with The Faceless; it’s still something a tech death fan could enter in blind and recognize that it’s some of the best the genre has to offer, up with names like Archspire and Black Crown Initiate. Its longer tracks, like “Synaptic Deprivation” and “Datalysium”, have that journey-like appeal that scratch the proggy itch, whereas intro track “The Axiom of Error” makes for a sample-size welcome to the next 43 minutes of chaos The Zenith Passage has cooking. The production on Datalysium is worthy of commendation too; not just because those concise guitar plucks hit like punches to the face, but the layering of reverb and synth evokes that alien element that makes The Zenith Passage an outlier in the tech-death realm.
The Zenith Passage could never escape the comparison to The Faceless; they got flak for it in 2016’s Solpisist, and now with Derek and Brandon in the fray, it’s impossible to look past. With that being said, it’s a non-issue; Datalysium is a chaotic tech-death album that doesn’t skip a beat. The comparison doesn’t matter – good music transcends that. Whenever I’m in the mood for this genre from now on, this is going to be one of the first things I throw on. I would have liked to hear some experimentation after feeling like I’ve heard this record before, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If you loved old Faceless, Datalysium is a no-brainer. If you’re into tech-death and haven’t heard of The Zenith Passage, you’re in for a treat.
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