Review of Dissonance in Design - "Sentient"
INDEPENDENT INSANITY
By: Geoff Teach
There is a reason why many “Best Of” lists do not actually get published until January of the following year. Fantastic albums can be released right up until zero hour. Upon listening to Dissonance in Design’s mid-November release, “Sentient”, I cannot help but think that it is because of albums like this that just such protocol is observed. Dissonance in Design has released a seven-track interstellar juggernaut of an album, and the best news of all? “Sentient” was completely and utterly independently produced and released. The Denver progressive/technical metal quintet’s newest effort sounds something akin to what you would get if you married Fallujah with The Contortionist, and the end result is nothing short of one of the best metal albums of the year, independent or otherwise.
Dissonance in Design’s “Sentient” is one of those rare albums where each track is just as fantastic as the one before it, or even more so. The opener, “The Gateway”, clocks in at just under three minutes and is certainly a nice little banger, but it is only once “Between Space and Time” begins to set into your eardrums that you truly begin to get a feel for what D.I.D. is trying to accomplish with this album. At over eleven minutes, “Between Space and Time” is a wonderful feast of technical lead and rhythm guitars coupled with intricately tight bass and drums. Moving along in the masterpiece, we come to the track that the band decided to release a lyric video for, “Entwined in Æther”, and it is in this song that you can see and hear all of the elements of the album’s artwork, lyrics, and musical concepts come together in one visionary effort. Check out the lyric video and see for yourself what I’m talking about:
As good as that song and video are, though, there is still so much more of the album left to explore! My favorite tracks on the album still haven’t even been breached…after all, thus far only three tracks have even graced us with their presence! Carrying on, “Sentient” features a duo of “Terminus” tracks, “Purpose” and “The Cleansing”, and while they are exquisitely well-executed, I’d like to focus most of my attention and praise to the other two remaining tracks on the album. My absolute favorite of the collection would have to be “Absolution”. After listening to the album a few times, it just sticks out as the one song that is the most emphatically bad ass of the bunch, as it just drips with dynamics and wickedly timed syncopation. Dissonance in Design employed some top-notch production in the making of this opus, and it is on “Absolution” that this production shines brightest. Finally, closing out “Sentient”, D.I.D. chooses to wow you with the resplendent melody, mist, and mayhem that is the epic title track. “Sentient”, the song, is so pretty, young metal heads everywhere who hear it just might try to ask it to prom. Taken as a whole, Dissonance in Design’s “Sentient” is just monstrous, both in your ears as well as in your mind, and I cannot stress enough how much I truly urge you to get your hands on a copy by any means necessary…
However, it’s really not as hard as I make it sound. Just buzz the boys of Dissonance in Design here to order your own copy of “Sentient” today!
Keep it metal, class dismissed.