The Faceless was another band that caught me by surprise within the last few months. When I saw an ad for their cd and MySpace I immediately wrote them off: their label mates on Sumerian Records were almost a tell-tale sign of crap (i.e. bands entirely based within the Hatebreed lineage of "hardcore") and the "for fans of Between the Buried and Me, The Black Dahlia Murder, and Meshuggah" tag almost sealed the deal for shit. When your comparisons are a band popular amongst scene kids who wouldn’t know better, the poster children of Hot Topic, and a tech band whose stalwarts are the metal equivalent of Tool fans (beside Opeth) there’s virtually little to save you from being the utter crème of the crap.

And this would be one of those few times where the odds are beaten. The Faceless in actuality do not suck. In fact, they’re actually pretty damn good. The description above is possibly the most inaccurate thing I’ve ever seen from a PR department; the bands used as a comparison REEK of name-dropping for sales purposes because The Faceless sound nothing like them. The closest thing The Faceless has to that description is the fact that they are heavily based in melodic death metal like The Black Dahlia Murder, however the comparison is tenuous at best because while they do take a lot from that scene, they don’t flat out attempt to steal its riffs like the aforementioned band. In actuality, The Faceless resemble more of a generally melodic death metal-centered version of Into Eternity (minus the clean vocals), waxing Necrophagist lite and throwing around keyboard-intensive pandering to Cynic and other more prog-centered acts. Yeah, that’s kinda different. Maybe these record companies should just hire me for their PR shit?

As to be expected, Akeldama has technicality and melody out the wazoo. For the most part, the vocal approach is lower-end guttural growls, though every once in awhile a higher screech Deicide-style gets thrown in there. The band occasionally whips out Necrophagist-esque riffing on songs like "Horizons of Chaos I" and generally follows a similar style of guitar work when they’re not appealing to the melodic death metal crowd, though on songs like "Leica" they trade out the Necrophagist-influenced solos for something more in line with Canadian technical prog death metallers Into Eternity. In general, they love to whip out the keyboards prog metal style and quite often it works to their advantage. However, on song like the above-mentioned "Leica" the keyboard work goes a bit overboard in the cheese territory. The instrumental title track which brings about allusions to both Cynic and Alarum however has the perfect balance of technical guitar work and keyboard usage, so it’s forgivable. Still, for future reference they’ll need to be a bit more prejudicial with those things.

All in all, The Faceless are a strong, solid, and promising technical melodic death metal act, though The Faceless seem to play second fiddle to the new Anomalous release in my cd player. Given the time span of this record’s release and the debut of Anomalous, I’m pretty sure people will draw comparisons between the two: while Anomalous is more of a straight brutal death metal act, the use of technical and prog influences are similar enough between the two and the final aesthetic product isn’t too far removed. The Faceless’s tendency to overdo the keyboards leaves me preferring Anomalous overall. In the end, though, this CD has more than enough strengths to recommend a purchase. If you have already grabbed Cognitive Dissonance by Anomalous, then The Faceless‘ Akeldama is a worthy grab afterwards. Ignore the "for fans of" sticker and the label’s other acts, The Faceless are a strong technical death metal act.

Written By: Necro-tron