Artist name not shared publicly.
Style: Mathcore, Djent (Harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Meshuggah, Car Bomb, Dillinger Escape Plan
Country: France
Release date: 17 January 2025
As I’ve gotten a bit older and wisened, I’ve thought more and more about the “album experience”, if you will. Often in this world of prog and prog-adjacent music, the album experience and package is held tantamount, and the expectation of delivering such a product is a rite of passage. Even in today’s algorithmic driven music industry (curse you!), the ultimate product for basically every act in the scene is a real album. But therein lies the rub: what dictates a full album experience, and at what point is there more material for the sake of runtime? This is something I think bands find themselves bumping up against more often in the current world, where attention is harder to wrest away than ever.
So why do I say all this at the top of a review of a mathcore album of all things? Honestly, it’s because my very first thought after finishing The Purest Light was: “Man this would be great if it was thirty-eight minutes instead of fifty.”
Vertex are a French Car Bomb and Meshuggah hybrid, with all the chugging riffs and angular rhythms pounding the eardrums from start to finish that you’d expect from that comparison. The first song “All My Hatred” immediately gives you exactly this combination, with its whammy-esque lead hook hitting immediately, juxtaposed with low chug diversions in between, which serve as some sort of verse—if such a thing really exists in this type of music. Not long after, you’ll hear riffs utilizing the high-fretboard, low-string sound that songs like “Demiurge” made famous. Most of the album is giving you some version of these two modes—either a descent into the more alien noises a guitar could make, or a dissertation on the ways to grid a rhythm on the bar line.
The most intrigue is created when there is deviation from this formula, when the riffs Vertex veer off to have an extra melodic quality, and create that magical sense of a riff you want to sing as it worms its way into your brain. The back quarter of the title track is the first real taste of this, with a chug+lead pairing that delves more into Animals as Leaders territory than the first bits of the album. Immediately after “The Purest Light”, you are dropped into “Leviathan”, which opens with the exact kind of singable riff I crave. This is where I wish Vertex spent the bulk of their time: in a melodic zone which gives the angular intrigue of mathcore while still providing an earworm hook.
The drums on The Purest Light stand out more than any other instrument, with Pierre Rettien of Hypno5e holding down that front. The performance is a highlight reel of linear fills, sporadic blasts, and impeccable footwork across barely readable rhythms. The vocals are the standard fare one would expect, being almost exclusively mid tone, either punctuating riffs and rhythms or moving parallel to them—existing alongside but never touching. The production and presentation is a highlight of the album, with absolute clarity in every instrument without sacrificing too much bite or losing heaviness.
But in the end, the successes of The Purest Light, while many, suffer from a lack of memorability and simply dragging on too long. When Knocked Loose put out their last album, it was unflinching and heavy without compromise—but it clocked at twenty-seven minutes. It had “hooks”. Vertex, I think, would have succeeded more with The Purest Light by taking a similar approach: streamlining the album’s material and reducing the amount of parts that, in the end, meld together into the nebulous thought of “yeah it had some chugs and some dadada dada dada dadadas”. In the moment, many passages feel great and give you a bit of the stink face, but I don’t find myself waiting for those on re-listens or even really remembering them. Instead I’m anticipating and skipping to the moments of melody and the earworms hidden in some of the best songs—anything that actually felt like it was meant to hook me—and grabbing onto those pieces for as long as I can.
Recommended tracks: The Purest Light, Leviathan, Following Arrows
You may also like: Fronterier, Freighter
Final verdict: 6.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Le Cri Du Charbon – Official Website
Vertex is:
– Pierre Rettien (drums)
– Michael Alberto Merone (bass)
– Maxence Griffond (guitars)
– Kik Mastan (vocals)
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