Artist: Sylosis (UK) Album: Edge of the Earth Genre: Melodic Death Metal with a load of Thrash It’s always a pleasure to discover a band you hadn’t heard of that blows your little boat straight out of the water. Sylosis, from a town called Reading, not so far from London, England, is just that, despite the fact it may be a great name to many of you. Or at least I expect them to be, due to the high quality of music performed on their second full-length album Edge of the Earth.

Edge of the Earth was released in early March of 2011 and I ordered my copy in response to this article, written by NCS contributor Israel Flanders. The album is a great example of value for money, because it doesn’t just offer some of the best Thrash-infused Melodeath I’ve heard all year (and last year) for an average price, it also offers very nearly 75 minutes of it, which is pretty much double the length of many a Metal album on the market these days.

And this long length is no trickery either. It’s not achieved through multiplying the number of times each riff is played by a factor two. No sir. The fourteen tracks on Edge of the Earth are well composed and flow past emotional landscapes that morph all over the fuckin’ place without ever looking the same. Unless you’re deafer than an earthworm – which apparently is an “animal” unable to hear – there’s no way this album could ever bore you. There’s just so much to hear.

I haven’t been able to discover any fixed pattern in the song’s on this album yet. The band of four, among which Alex Bailey, former guitarist in one of my favorite bands of recent, Viatrophy, seem just to take the music where it wants to go. And that is to a lot of different places! Especially earlier on in the album, the Realm of Thrash is often visited, where quick fuckin’ riffs of a raw fuckin’ nature violently blast their way to your ears. Towards the end there’s more groove-heavy Death Metal to be found. But, in both cases, this is just a general rule and you’ll find both working together like Mario and Luigi double teaming the Princess.

But that’s not it, as there’s more than plenty of room for both catchy and deep melodies and harmonies. It pops up from out of the blue sometimes, but always following the musical logical path of the moment and it delivers moods and emotions taken from a rich pallet. One of my favorite moments is the break part starting at 1:54 in the sixth track, Awakening, but it’s just one of numerous examples of moments on this album that break me up into some excessive expression of emotion, be it goose bumps and tears in my eyes or angry-looking headbanging.

Another favorite is song no. 10, Apparitions, starting off calmly for the first minute or so, but breaking out into a captivating piece of riffage, then Thrash with dark tones for added spice and some great fuckin’ vocals. Brutal, somewhat monotonic and intriguing as the deeper pits of Hell!

Though let’s be honest about it, I haven’t been able to point out the weaker tracks on this record yet. Usually when I’m listening to an album there’ll always be a few or a hand full of songs that just don’t quite cut it and which I will tend to skip without thinking. Push the button and on to the next. Not on Edge of the Earth! In fact, each track has me longing to hear it again, but then the next one has already captured by attention and I get utterly confused about what I need / want to hear.

There’s only one solution. Simple: spin the album time after time and soak in as much of it as possible before some shitty obligation arrives and my listening sessions ends again. That means that by now I must’ve heard this bugger about fifteen to twenty times already, and that considering that it’s 75 minutes in duration and I’ve only had it for about two weeks should tell you enough. Getting this is like getting addicted.

To close off, I urge you to check out the video below, the band’s official music video for Empyreal (Part 1), which, with its majestically awesome guitar tapping and well-filled riffage, should have no trouble at all capturing the fuck out of your attention.

Now try to decide which of the above songs you want to listen to again first! Told ya, it’s tough as fuck!

My Grade: 9.5/10
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Tags: death, English, melodeath, melodic, review, thrash

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