May 112011
 

This post is what we consider a “public service announcement”. In other words, we’re informing you of something that we know many of you will be interested in learning — but not because we’re recommending it to you.

Within approximately the last hour, The Faceless posted a “pre-production preview” of a new song called “The Eidolon Reality”, which will appear on the band’s next album, due sometime this fall. This is not the final mastered version of the track. I’m not sure why the band (or Sumerian) decided to release this instead of waiting until completion of mastering, but they did.

Fans of technical death metal have mixed opinions about The Faceless. We here at NCS are fans of technical death metal, and we liked Akeldema and, to a lesser extent, Planetary Duality. But to be honest, this new song made me cringe. Literally. Cringe.  I even have a hard time developing an opinion about the instrumental work and the growly vocals because the song includes some truly bad clean singing. There. I said it. Go past the jump and listen for yourselves.  Be forewarned, I think the YouTube clip is set to begin playing automatically.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHlf6TnHDcQ
UPDATE (May 12):

Sumerian Records has just posted a second “pre-production” preview of this song.  I’m confused.  Either this is an additional segment of the song, which is longer than I thought it was, or an additional instrumental track has been added to the recording of teh song. It does sound like a second guitar solo is in there. But I haven’t gone back to listen to the first preview track to figure this out for sure. You know why.

FURTHER UPDATE (May 12):

Well, as you can see, since our first update earlier this afternoon, the first “pre-production preview” has gone dark, which must mean that the second one was a replacement that included something that the first one lacked — in which case I really don’t understand why Sumerian put up the first “preview” yesterday. On the other hand, no one ever accused me of being a marketing genius.

However, the second preview still includes those vocals . . .

  27 Responses to “NEW SONG FROM THE FACELESS (GROAN)”

  1. I didn’t think that singing was all that bad. I expected some sort of out-of-tune caterwauling, but instead got some very Cynic/Extol-esque weird melody.

    Not terrible.

    • Really? Maybe my hearing is more fucked up than I thought, but to me he sounded off-key (flat). Also, I thought it was really jarring in combination with the rest of the song.

  2. It’s a pre-production track so I’ll reserve judgement…I’m sure the clean singing will be nicely fixed by Pro-Tools and the final mix and master. Though, I’d love to hear the vocoder vocals brought back again.

  3. On an unrelated note, I am far more interested in the new Unearth song ‘Eyes of Black’ which premiered overnight. Much improved on their last effort — it’s faster, the drumming is excellent (Foley can finally show off his talents) and is much more pissed off sounding — proof that metalcore is still alive and well as long as the innovators such as Unearth are still around making quality metal.

    • I agree with you about the Unearth song. I have a post ready to go about it, but I’ve put up so many today I thought I’d wait until tomorrow morning.

  4. OKAY. I GET IT. THIS YEAR IS THE, PRONOUNCED “THEE” YEAR FOR DEATH METAL! THAT DOESN’T MEAN THAT I HAVE THE FUNDS TO PURCHASE ALL THIS MUSIC!

    • Also, the sung vocals aren’t terrible in my opinion, but I’d prefer if they had been left out of the mix…

    • So true. I have fallen into the lap of luxury, in that our humble site has now reached a certain level of popularity that an extravagant number of record labels are deluded enough to send us free review copies of new music, thereby saving me money. What is the answer for metalheads who still have some moral compunction against downloading? I have no answer. Other than to state the age-old truism that life . . . life is the story of suffering.

      • Dude, I have a list of 27 albums to buy this year, at least 2/3 of that list is made up of releases from this 2011.

  5. The clean vocals were definitely not…suitable…for the song….

    • “Not suitable.” This is an example of the civilized level of discourse that has come to define the comment section of this site.

      • I mean, I don’t think the vocals were bad as vocals. I just felt like they belonged in a song from an entirely different genre. It sounded more hippie like to me than metal, for example.

  6. I actually dont think the singing is bad at all… it’s not the best, but it certainly is NOT the worst I’ve heard, and I think the music is pretty fantastic sounding for a pre-production…. In my opinion the clean singing on the ‘mafia’ EP by fleshgod is much worse than this… THAT made me cringe

    • I’m going to have to think harder about this. I thought the clean vocals on Mafia worked and didn’t feel jarring or out of place, though I think they are on The Faceless track. But I’m not sure I can explain the difference. In any event, I ought to take the advice of others above and suspend judgment until I hear the final mastered version of “The Eidolon Reality”.

      • It’s not about thinking about it… it’s about your opinion and judgement of the track. 😉 Although I think, what you said about the reserving of judgement is correct. It’s stupid for them to release a un-mastered track like this, let’s hear the finished product and then have this discussion again!

  7. I’m gonna disagree with my editor here and post my honest opinion.

    The faceless are the best teth band around. This song rocks.

  8. When I think The Faceless I don’t think of clean singing. Hopefully the rest of the record won’t have much of those.

  9. My biggest issue with this is the comparison my brain makes between this song and Akeldema. Especially after reading the post about this generation’s “Big 4” (The Faceless included), I just have such high expectations for this band, which I don’t think is unfair. Akeldema is one of the best tech death albums that I’m aware of, and this song departs from that sound which becomes an automatic disappointment, regardless of the “okayness” or “mediocraty” or “not-so-bad” clean vocals.

    • I’m sure this is part of what happened to me, too, when I heard it. I’m holding out hope — this is one song only, and a pre-production version at that.

  10. shut the fuck up.
    the faceless is the best band to walk the fucking planet.
    suck a fucking cock, fucking haters.

    • Dude! Chill out! We’re not hating on The Faceless. Just about every comment here is from someone who’ s a fan of this band — I certainly am. Some of us are just expressing some disappointment about the clean vocals. If we didn’t care about the music, we wouldn’t be talking about it this way. I’m still going to listen to the album when it comes and am reserving judgment about it until then.

      • Oh wow, I thought NoCleanSinging was lucky enough not to attract this sort of commenter. Ah well.

        And really, telling someone to “shut the fuck up” on a comments board… what exactly is tht going to achieve?

        • What? You don’t find this comment refreshing? We really don’t get many like it here. It’s like a visitor from a distant land come to pay his respects. We should open our hearts and our homes in a spirit of graciousness and good will. I’m sure what he meant to say was “I respectfully disagree with your hasty and ill-conceived reaction to this song,” and it just came out as “suck a fucking cock.”

  11. I like it alot, it’s not Akeldama or Planetary Duality but that’s good.
    People are forgetting the Faceless are a progressive band, it’s their job to mix things up and do what no-one else is! If that means clean singing then more power to them

    • I’m feeling duly chastised by many of these comments. I do realize that lots of good, creative bands don’t stay in the exact same place musically as time passes. Just have to wait and see if it works in the case of The Faceless, and of course whether the changes work will depend a lot on the listener’s personal tastes.

  12. Just to keep the shit stirred up, another vote on the “con” side of the ballot:

    http://www.metality.net/2011/05/thoughts-on-pre-production-version-of.html

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