Genres: progressive metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Haken (ketchup/mustard era), Soen, post-hiatus Fates Warning
Country: Denmark
Release date: 19 January 2024
One of the biggest strengths I believe this blog has is that no matter who you are, we will give an honest critical assessment of your work. I’ve given some of my most critical reviews to albums from friends because if I know you, I put in extra effort to give you the best review that I can, for better or worse. Advocacy is a band whose debut EP I reviewed a few years ago and gave a middling score to, so I was quite surprised to see them actively reach out to us with a promo for their debut full length, being extremely attentive and polite in the process; thus, it pains me to say that I must hit them with the big UNFORTUNATELY… I’m not sure if they’ve markedly improved. It has potential though!
Advocacy play a modern brand of progressive metal with chonky, downtuned riffs, a smooth drumming style, and somber but melodic vocals akin to Soen or Katatonia, landing them to an overall sound similar to Haken circa Vector and Virus era but without the quirkiness. Though really, I could name almost any band because Advocacy are quite amorphous with their influences, ranging from djent to Iron Maiden-esque harmonies to Soen-esque groovy alt-prog to Spiral Architect-esque old school tech riffs to post-rock or even blackgaze styled swelling tremolos. This plethora of influences results in a staggering amount of good riffs throughout The Path of Decoherence and is, in my opinion, the band’s greatest strength on this album.
However, problems arrive quickly as loud drums and muffled guitars smother much of Advocacy’s soundscapes to the point that quieter parts are still too loud (“Star Formation,” 2:28) or that I hardly noticed a guitar solo until it transitioned into a different one (“Prayer for the Reckless,” 4:50-5:11), and apparently the band has three guitarists but I can only ever discern two underneath the muffled production. I’ll give them credit for how professional their mix sounds otherwise and that none of these problems are poor enough to give me a headache, but it’s too imbalanced for me to give it a pass.
Another problem with The Path of Decoherence is Advocacy’s tendency to overcomplicate, resulting in unpleasantly crowded arrangements and convoluted transitions. Sometimes the drummer will go nuts in a quiet part (“Prayer for the Reckless,” 0:35), other times they will unnecessarily chop up the vocal melodies to sound prog (“Leap of Faith,” 3:10), put in a section too many (again, “Leap of Faith,” 4:10, “Prayer for the Reckless,” 4:00, 5:56), or make the riffs proggier than the vocals (most of “Cut Loose”). And speaking of the vocals, they are easily the weakest link here. Søren Kjeldsen’s timbre is pleasant and strongly akin to Joel Ekelöf from Soen, but his melodies sound a little lifeless to me more often than not. With the lyrics in front of me, I can tell what he’s going for usually but he plays it safe too much, and with how overbearing the guitars and drums are, what passion he does have hardly comes through.
On the bright side, though, Advocacy show promise underneath the rubble. In “Deranged” they incorporate post-rock elements which force them to keep things relatively simple, resulting in a stunning climax despite a few wonky transitions. “Star Formation” recalls modern Fates Warning with its melodic shred over whirling tech riffs; “Cut Loose” has some wonderful emotional guitarwork near the climax; and like I mentioned earlier, their riff game in general shines in both quality and diversity, gracing each song with at least one hard hitting riff.
So, yeah… The Path of Decoherence is rough, but it’s by no means beyond salvageable. Advocacy have a lot of the right ideas and their playing is up to the high genre standards of progressive metal. Now they just need to find a way to piece those ideas together in a way that brings out the best of them, and iron out the aforementioned production issues. There is a great band in there somewhere, and I’ll be eager to see if one day they can fulfill their potential.
Recommended tracks: Prayer for the Reckless, Deranged
You may also like: Avandra, Nospūn, Pyramid Theorem
Final verdict: 5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Target Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
Advocacy is:
– Søren Kjeldsen (vocals, guitars)
– Søren Wind (guitars)
– Peter Locher (guitars)
– Peter Juelsgaard (bass, backing vocals)
– Andreas Bek Nygaard Hansen (drums)
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