The Massachussettsian progressive metallers The Beast Of Nod, seem to have honed their skills enough on two EPs: "Enter The Land Of Nod" (2015) and "Arrival" (2016) as well as one full length, "Vampiria: Disciple Of Chaos" (2018) to create a worthy follow-up, so why is this year’s "Multiversal" such a magnifiscent display of instrumental prowess overshadowing the apparent lack of ability to compose a track which can sustain your undivided attention for some 5 or 6 minutes before you absentmindedly drift away to the new Fear Factory album?

The problem, as asserted earlier, are not the instrumental skills. Paul Buckley (vocals), Will "Görebläster-Körpse-Härvest" "Dr. Gore" Lunden (guitars, programming), Brendan Burdick (bass) plus Six Feet Under drummer Marco "Lord" Pitruzzella as a session performer, aided by guest guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani have crafted incredibly tight compositions if the "Fiction" Dark Tranquillitian and Katatonian "Contemporary Calamity" or Opethian and Toolish "Guardians of the Multiverse" and even the impressively symphonic Cradle Of Filthy "Unleashing Chaos" are any indication, chockfull of melodies, riffs, hooks, ebbs, flows, twists and turns capable of making progressive experimentors such as Alkaloid (Shredding Of The Cosmos), Becoming The Archetype (Unleashing Chaos), Between The Buried And Me (Flight Of The Quetzalcoatlus) and even Enslaved (throughout) all either green with envy or very proud. But then again, where are the songs?

My mind was working extremely hard to focus already after the third track (Intergalactic War!) and the first half is actually fairly engaging. But whenever you get around to "The Plan For Multiversal Creation" or "The Latent Threat" followed by the closer "Shredding Of the Cosmos" to quote Shadows Fall, you’re gone! It is these tracks, too, which emphasize the pointlesness of the vocals where this material could have been better served instrumental and then, at least it wouldn’t be able to pretend to be an album of songs.

Again, all the parts are there to make an excellent, even fantastic album but it all amounts to a gigantic and lengthy mess of tremendous instrumental skill and that kind of album usually gets no more than 4/6 from this journalist.

https://www.thebeastofnod.com/