This Age of Silence

Album Review

Anterior are a British metal act. Playing together for about four years, the quartet featured here released its debut, This Age of Silence, on Metal Blade (in its 25th year of existence in 2007 — whoa!). Featuring guitarist/vocalist Luke Davies, lead guitarist Leon Kemp, bassist James Britton (who left the band shortly before the release of the disc), and drummer Ross Andrews with co-production by the band and Tim Hammill, This Age of Silence is a fine first. The music here is bone-crushing thrash with elements of metalcore, progressive metal, and death metal. There is an incredibly high degree of creativity and technical acumen. Think something between Florida's Trivium and Glasgow's Mendeed and you get the idea. Kemp's arrangements are fresh, tight, and aggressive. Hammill's production tries to present space and dimension instead of compressing the living hell out of everything. He succeeds. Anterior are already loud as hell; they don't need further enhancement. The finest thing about the sound is how clean it is. Given the attention to detail in these songs, it couldn't have been presented any other way. Big double bass drum assaults, blastbeats galore, and the wall of guitars provide a fine platform for Davies' vocals, which are shouted as well as sung. But in a sense, despite the great lyric writing and compositions — check "The Silent Divide," "Human Hive," "Scar City," and "Seraph" — it's that attention to dynamic and flow and the truly astonishing guitar work from Kemp that put this baby over the top and make it such a promising effort. This Age of Silence is as good as anything in this vein you are going to hear and better than most. One only hopes that the live show approaches the intensity and beautiful brutality of the album.