Review: Dyssidia – Costly Signals

Style: progressive metal, metalcore, power metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Between the Buried and Me, Native Construct, Rhapsody of Fire
Review by: Jonah
Country: Australia
Release date: 27 March, 2020

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This review was originally published in the March 2020 Part 3 issue of The Progressive Subway.]

So the first time I listened to this album. I kind of hated it. As I believe I have made clear in previous reviews, anything relating to Between the Buried and Me is a pretty hard “no” from yours truly. So when I tossed on this album and heard something that sounded like symphonic BTBAM I was too busy cringing and hitting the off button to really give it an honest shot. Well, after a couple more attempts and the album catching me in the correct mood, I’m here to say that I’m an asshole and this is actually a pretty good album.

If you’ve ever wanted something that captures the chaos and eccentricity of BTBAM and the theatricality and bombast of Rhapsody of Fire (I know I have literally never wanted that), then this is the band for you. It works far better than it should, and makes for an album that I can enjoy most of the time. They occasionally dive too deep into the BTBAM nonsense and it loses me, but there’s some damn fine music here. The album also answers the age-old question: “how would BTBAM sound if they had a good clean vocalist?”

Good, they would sound good, it turns out.

I kid, of course, Thomas Giles has a perfectly serviceable voice, but the singer for Dyssidia can fucking SING. This dude has some killer pipes, and he intersperses them with some really pleasant hardcore shouts and higher, almost blackened, rasps that all fit the music quite well. The rest of the instrumentation is all varying degrees of excellent. The bass is very audible and provides a nice mix of chugging and exciting little bass lines. The guitar is all over the damn place and very impressive, and the drumming is a real highlight. The synths and symphonic elements never feel overly cheesy or unnecessary and absolutely add to the experience.

So do I love this album? No, not really. I don’t think I’ll be returning to it a ton, but I have a huge amount of respect for the talent that has gone into this. This is some incredibly well made music by some seriously talented musicians, and I’ll be severely disappointed if they don’t get some recognition in the prog community. Much like Native Construct and Others by No One, Dyssidia has done an admirable job of evolving the BTBAM sound and I hope there’s plenty more to come.

Recommended tracks: Thrive, Bloodrush, Arrival
You may also like: The Alpha Incident, Embrace of Disharmony, Chronicles
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Independent

Dyssidia is:
– Mitch Brackman (vocals)
– Nathan Harvey (keyboards)
– Corey Davis (guitar)
– Neil Palmer (bass)
– Jesse Olley (drums)