Style: Black (harsh vocals)
Review by: Sam
Country: US-PN
Release date: 27 September, 2019
NOTE: This album was originally included in the September 2019 issue of The Progressive Subway
IATT, previously known as I Am the Trireme, is a band that apparently used to play Metalcore so poor Angry Metal Guy gave it a 1/10. And despite their general skepticism and overt negativity, 1/10 (or 0.5/5) scores are rare for even them. Four years later however, they completely turned themselves around musically and decided they wanted to play Progressive Black Metal instead. AMG decided it 4/5 worthy, which is very high praise considering (again) their usual skepticism, so here they are for a review.
If it wasn’t for the AMG review, I’d have never believed this band would have Metalcore roots, for those elements are completely absent in this album. It’s very extreme music. IATT generally take no prisoners and go for the Black/Death Metal assault. There are softer parts, but never do they go without a sensation of lurking extremity around the corner. Even when they go full acoustic you never feel fully safe for the inevitable burst.
Yet despite this, Nomenclature is a very melodic album. There are lots of Heavy Metal-inspired leads going on, and the Death Metal parts have a very Opeth-y feeling to them. These more melodic bits are generally a highlight in their songs. I found them very tasteful. Weirdly enough the music is also very groovy often. I’d like to thank their drummer for this. He lays down some very cool rhythms and keeps things a lot more varied than most drummers in this style tend to do. His playing is the biggest highlight of the album for me.
This band’s songwriting is a bit weird. Like I mentioned earlier, sometimes they break from the extremity for softer sections, but it never feels like they’re fully committed to them. It’s as if they wanted to do Opeth, but weren’t entirely sure of how to naturally incorporate it into the music. For example at one point in Blade of Trepanation they bring in the Hammond organ in a way that makes you think there’ll be a solo, but then suddenly they just drop it and go on like nothing happened. It’s very confusing songwriting, which I ultimately feel is the leading theme here. The highs are incredible, but songs are needlessly padded and tend to feel aimless. Hence the album becomes same-y after a while.
I should also mention something about the vocals. I tagged this as “harsh vocals”, but the truth is that there is also some singing. The reason for this is that the singing is used in the exact same way the harsh vocals are, and they barely vary in pitch. It took me three listens to notice there was even singing to begin with lol. It’s not bad per se, just completely unmemorable. I wish they did some more singing in the softer passages. That’d help in making them feel less random. The harsh vocals on the other hand are a lot better. They sound very beefy and are surprisingly intelligible. Some of the vocal lines are even, dare I say it, catchy.
So we come to the conclusion. Nomenclature took me a good while to fully absorb, but now I can fully say IATT still have some work to do. The peaks are very high, but generally confused and bloated songwriting harm the record a lot. This is the sound of a band that is very talented, but just hasn’t figured out what it is exactly they wish to do yet. If you’re in for something extreme that’s also proggy, give this a listen. Otherwise though, I wouldn’t recommend this just yet.
Recommended tracks: Realm of Dysthymia, Yersenia Pestis, Arsenic Ways
Recommended for fans of: Dissection, Opeth, Warforged
Final verdict: 6.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Metal-Archives page
Label: Black Lion Records – Bandcamp | YouTube | Facebook
IATT is:
– Paul Cole (drums)
– Joe Cantamessa (guitars)
– Alec Pezzano (guitars, orchestration)
– Jay Briscoe (vocals, bass)
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