On their Unique Leader debut "The Harvest Wounds" they had shown more of a Blackened Tech-Death style with touches of Atmospheric musings, but seriously those leads, the guitar work was just beautiful. The first time I heard that album I was sitting at my computer with my mouth open looking like Eli Manning mouth breathing and all. That being said, yes I have known about Fallujah for a while now since the "Leper Colony" days, trust me if you listened to "Leper Colony" and then listened to "Nomadic" you'd think I was fucking with you. So for me to hear "Harvest Wombs" I was blown away all together. So when I heard Fallujah was releasing a new EP my inner fan-boy got me all giddy. So lets break this bad boy down!
The Dead Sea - Starts off in true Fallujah fashion building growing and boom you get hit with the drums. Lots of choppy guitar rhythms and heavy hitting riffage. The Melodic leads soon lead you through into a great atmospheric break. Fallujah does a great job of keeping life in the atmosphere and not just making reverberated drones like most have come to expect. The layering of guitar work is genius nothing is overpowering and everyone is balanced in the mix.
Silent - Is an Instrumental track that fits like a bridge between the songs. I found it a fitting track to give you a breather and reflect on what you just heard and kind of catch up as this is only a 3 songer and "The Dead Sea" and "Venom Upon the Blade" are two totally different animals.
Venom Upon the Blade - The final track of the EP and my personal favorite. There's so much depth to the writing and composition of this song I could go on for days! The track starts off BIG with heavy riffing, a wailing lead, and hard hitting drums. The guitars put in a massive amount of work in the beginning of the song and don't quit. The leads on this song are just tastefully done, and one thing I can say about this recording is the guitars don't have that weird overactive noisegate punch tone to them. So it sounds like real playing versus some real studio magic where they had to half-time record some parts (cough cough Rings of Saturn. Controversy I know right?) and the drums don't sound fake at all, triggers alright I'll give you that, but no programming here. Now when they drop you into another atmospheric part here is where I flipped out the most. This part is just beautiful, again the headroom on these parts amazes me. It sounds like I'm in the middle of their recording. The only question I have is, was that singing or guitar effects? As for the singing it almost sounds female and if not maybe it's a little nod to Cynic with the use of a vocoder. Anyway as I pull my pants up now, the drums just fuck you up and go hyper speed like, "Yeah that was pretty. But watch this." and boom they're off! So good.
The Final Word: For this being a 2-3 song EP it is amazing, engaging and thought provoking through and through. The overall quality of recording and feel of the music is just stellar. I still can't wrap my head around how good this sounds and how they got the recording to have so much headroom. It feels like I'm fully encompassed by the music. Great music by great hardworking musicians, do yourself a favor and pick up this EP. I leave you with a little "Venom Upon the Blade".
Follow Fallujah on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fallujahofficial
or check out their tumblr: http://fallujah.tumblr.com/
and if you really don't want to do that buy Nomadic here: http://fallujah.bandcamp.com/
-Wes
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