Slice The Cake - The Man With No Face (2012)

1. "Intro"   1:36

2. "Rational Thinking, Logical
 Future"  2:23

3. "City Of Ghosts"  4:06

4. "Time Unwinding"  5:39

5. "Of Gallows"  7:56

6. "As Written In Pnakotus"  5:59

7. "Promethean"  5:56

8. "Equilibrium"  6:16

9. "The Chasm”  5:32

10. "The Man With No Face"  21:08

(Genre –Progressive Death Metal/Deathcore)

(Label – Unsigned)

     
FACEBOOK - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Slice-The-Cake/169544469750016

  Remember that little deathcore band back in 2010, with the silly little name and the kinda generic sounding EP? Doesn’t matter actually.  You won’t even care about what the band has put out before or if the name sounds childish after you feast your ears with this album.

  

  Slice The Cake is a band consisted of 3 members which live in three different countries. Jonas Johansson (Guitars, Programming & Production) from Sweden, Gareth Edwards (Vocals) from England and Jack Richardson (Bass) from Australia. Not impressed? Well if you get to listen to the job they’ve done on this album while living so far apart, you will be. This record is just incredible on every level, either it’s from a compositional creativity, musicianship, or mix and production standpoint.

  

  I don’t want to talk about the album track by track because I see it as a 67min long song, so I will try to sum up my impressions keeping track references to a minimum.
  The general tone of the album is aggressive, melodic and really fast, with lots of orchestral parts. All of the songs have something to say and they sound like they were written to succeed one another. You meet so many cinematic elements in it, It keeps giving you the impression it was written to accompany a spectacle of some kind. The vocals are great. Both growls and cleans (that can be heard on some songs) are just breathtaking. The growls remind me a bit of Phil Bozeman, while the cleans have an Akerfeldt/Tom Giles tone to them but without ever being overused, like everything on this album.  The drum programming is top notch and they did a pretty good job of making it sound as less VSTish as possible. To be fair though, there are some moments were the album tends to tire ears that are not used in technical music or long songs, but it’s also one of these albums that the longer you listen to it, the more you get into it, and you can’t tell which part was the one to wear out your patience back at your first listens.

  

  The style sounds like a mixture of Between The Buried And Me, Opeth’s heavy parts and add to that some of The Contortionist’s flavor. Now that’s some pretty good bands to get influenced by. But even some of those huge bands would be jealous of the awesomeness this album radiates.

   

  Now, let’s talk about track #10.  I know I said I would try to keep the track references to a minimum, but this track deserves to be an exception. “The Man Without A Face” is the best +20min metal song I’ve ever heard. And that beats some serious competition in Meshuggah’s “I” and Dream Theater’s “A Change Of Seasons”. It’s so well written, it doesn’t fail to be interesting for a second, it combines all the elements that were previously heard on the album, only it’s like this song is a tale on its own. Even if you never had the patience to listen to a song that long, this one defies that fact and you will find yourself being let on its flow. There couldn’t be a better way to close an album with almost no flaws, than giving you a song with none.

  

  An early candidate for “album of the year”? Sure as hell is. And if a certain 5 member Swedish band, named after the Hebrew word for “Crazy” didn’t put out the album they did, I would go ahead and dub it the album of the year right now. It’s that fuckin good.

Be sure to pay a visit to the band’s site http://www.slicethecake.net/ and buy this album. It’s only 11$ and we need bands like them to keep making music, amazing music that is.

  Notable Songs : The Man With No Face, Of Gallows, City Of Ghosts

9 1/2/10