‘Odyssey To The West’ is an album that I am extremely excited to offer a review for. Like much of the metal community, this release passed me by completely. I’m almost embarrassed to say that I knew nothing about this release, or even this band, until the humble Spotify offered me a slice of the most honeyed cake that I have ever beheld. With one-member hailing from England, another from Sweden and the other from Australia, Slice The Cake was born from an ambition to transcend the common notions of what a band is, by existing almost solely in the realms of the internet. Birthed under a heavy fog of controversy in April of 2016, ‘Odyssey’ was released into the world without the consent of the main songwriter. Yet despite the backhanded nature of the release, the world, or at least my life, is all the richer for it. Mistakenly pigeonholed by some as just your paint by numbers deathcore, Slice The Cake uses a rock-solid conceptual edge to smash that preconceived notion to smithereens before building something graceful and innovative from the wreckage. Written around one man’s journey to find God, ‘Odyssey’ is very much like the Lord of the Rings in that the album is massive, dense and all about the journey.
Perhaps it was because this album followed directly on from a playlist that was comprised of bands like Fit For A King and In the Midst of Lions, or perhaps it was because with a name like ‘Slice The Cake’ I wasn’t expecting anything serious, the opening track of the album ‘The Exile Part I: The Razor’s Edge’ left me truly dumbfounded. Opening to a heavy exhale that instantly transitions into a spoken word treatise above a masterfully crafted and thought-provoking finger picked melody, the listener is introduced to the main focus of this epic, The Pilgrim. Thrust into The Pilgrims discourse we learn of his internal conflict, should he answer the voice that speaks to his mind and travel westward to begin his path to God, or should he continue to stay with his love and ignore the often-painful musings that torment his psyche. With the introduction of the repeating distorted guitar riff, The Pilgrims answer becomes clear.
With Gareth’s poetic vocal delivery introducing us to the dark and bleak landscape that is The Pilgrim’s existence, the second song on this album ‘The Exile II: The City Of Destruction’ confirms to the listener that this album is not your typical metal release. Opening with an acoustic variation of the distorted riff that forms the foundation of the chorus, the listener is taken on a progressive journey through the metal landscape with a combination of powerful spoken word passages, blackened blastbeats and throat punching death metal. Yet importantly, as this song shows, the metal on this album is not a constant fixture. Instead, imbued with solid sentiment, the metal on this release is just as much a part of the story as the vocal performance that overlays it, and as a result, the metal on this album ebbs and flows just like the emotions that it is trying to portray.
Delivering seventy-seven minutes of genre-bending entertainment, this fifteen-track behemoth is teeming with death-metal sensibilities and thanks to the work of multi-instrumentalist Jonas Johansson, Slice The Cake’s ‘Odyssey to the West’ displays some of the most captivating riffage in metal. Split into five distinct acts with a few standalone tracks, it’s not hard to say that ‘Odyssey To The West’, is one of the most phenomenal and thought provoking albums that you are likely to come across. Rivaling some of the best story tellers of our age, main song writer Jack Magero’s carefully crafted compositions ignite a scene so vivid to the imagination that to the listener, The Pilgrim almost becomes real. So real in fact that you will keep coming back to the album again and again to visit The Pilgrim as if he were an old friend.
However, therein lies my only real criticism of this album. Reveled only when trying to explain the brilliance of this release to a close friend, in playing individual songs it became apparent that ‘Odyssey to the West’ does such a good job at playing a theme and immersing the listener in thick atmosphere that this album struggles with casual listens. As good as each song is as an expression of progressive excellence, individual songs simply fail to convey the ground shaking excellence of its sum. In the same way that a five-minute clip from the latest blockbuster may display some stunning cinematography but fail to convey the intricacies of the overall plot, in playing what I believed to be some of the better moments of this epic, I was frustrated to find that I was unable to convincingly communicate the majesty of this tale. Try as I might to argue the point and explain the context, it wasn’t long before desperation took over and the only recourse available to me was to gaffer tape my friend to a chair and force him to accompany The Pilgrim on his ‘Odyssey to the West’. Of course, I didn’t really go that far, but if like me, you listen to this album from start to finish, you will be surprised as to the lengths you will go to spread the reach of this masterpiece.
A review by Matthew Young.
