Review: Exist – Egoiista

Style: progressive metal, death metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Cynic, Death (Human era), Atheist
Review by: Chris
Country: Maryland, United States
Release date: 28 August 2020

I remember earlier last year discovering So True, So Bound by Exist and giving it a listen after having been hounded to multiple times by a lot of friends. I came away from that album truly wondering why it didn’t land for me. On paper it seemed like the exact thing I would fawn over, but the way it was presented just didn’t work for me. When I heard Egoiista was coming out I figured I’d see if they had come around to landing in a way that So True, So Bound had not. So did they?

So True, So Bound to me always had a bit of a feel of wanting to be a Cynic offshoot for real, but didn’t quite hit that mark. Egoiista I think has hit this mark much more, feeling like a Cynic that never lost their death metal roots at many times, while having nods to the Human era Death and contemporaries as well. The bass and drums are very much standout instruments in this album, with the drums providing multiple moments of metric shifts and feel changes which help color the riffs in different ways in their repetitions. As with any good death metal album with some technical leanings, the bass is allowed to have a voice all its own and the times where it really comes forward as a leading voice are well done. The guitars I found most interesting in the cleaner or jazzier influenced parts. I’m normally not a big fan of long winded soloing sections but I found myself enjoying the solos on this album quite a bit, maybe because of the progressions underneath them.

The vocals are definitely going to be the main point of contention or difference of opinions on this album I think. Max Phelps’s harsh tone is definitely similar to Focus era Cynic harshes, though with how forward they become in a more modern mix some people I think will be off-put by it. It grew on me more and more but I still think it’s the weakest aspect of the album musically. Clean vocals-wise the album has great arrangement on all the sections with clean vocals which really bolster their impacts. Are they technically the greatest performance? Perhaps not, but they have a very unique quality to them timbre wise that I very much enjoyed.

Writing wise the main thing that immediately stuck out was the usage of the initial intro theme in the first track “Through Suffering He Paints the Universe” as a leitmotif in later parts of the album, with it returning as a more Deathened (is that a phrase? can I invent it?) version on “Egocosm” and again being turned into an eight and a half minute meditation on the theme in the close “Amongst the Trees”. “The Lottery” and “Spotlight’s Glow” are probably my favorite expositions of what Exist is trying to be as a band, as those most clearly run the gambit of their death metal roots and the unique clean vocal/jazz guitar sensibilities they bring around on their lighter half. This album really is a good half split between twisting rough metal sections and really well thought out lighter arrangements.

So did it really land for me?

Well in many ways yes, but in some ways I think I still struggle a little with this band. Egoiista is definitely a very well played and performed album as one would expect from anything in the genre space. It has so many moments where the grooves or heavy sections really hit or the drums really take over that immediately sold me. Other times, I find myself wishing I didn’t feel like I was grasping for a groove. Egoiista is a very dense, heady album with its detours into jazzy elements and ping-ponging across metric modulations from the instruments. But it has moments where for some reason it just doesn’t seem to fully ground itself. I found a few sections where it seems to lose itself inside it’s own musings and for lack of a better way to describe it, sometimes feels like it wasn’t fully written with a listener in mind. It sometimes falls into the same trap I felt on So True, So Bound where it sometimes falls into a doomy feeling slosh to often and struggles to drag me out of that mindset. But mostly I still found there were a few times that the way the instruments were talking together as a unit didn’t quite mesh to me. However, I know some of these critiques are very personal and feeling based, and as such my Final Verdict still reflects a number I think is fair to this album for how how well made it is.

Honestly, I think this album is one that needs many listens to fully experience and appreciate, and I won’t be surprised if by the end of the year I can’t stop talking about this album. After all, I hated Traced in Air the first time I listened to it, and now I can’t go a week without listening to it.

Recommended tracks: The Lottery, Egocosm, Spotlight’s Glow
You may also like: Sutrah
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Prosthetic Records – Bandcamp | Website | Facebook

Exist is:
– Max Phelps (vocals/guitars)
– Alex Weber (bass)
– Matthew Rossa (guitar)
– Brody Smith (Drums)
– Jordan Miller (keyboards)