Hailing from the same school of modern prog as mid-to-late career P-Tree, Anathema and Godsticks, Meta have been honing their craft for years; Spatterlight is the result.
Here duo Alec Yeager (guitar) and Joshua Breeden (drums) mix elements of prog metal with the same callbacks to classic prog that have marked the most successful modern progressive rock bands. By Your Silence is the closest the band veer to modern progressive metal, managing to use growled vocals with enough nuance that even non-metal listeners will probably find the climax of alternating vocal parts more seductive than a turn-off. Tracks such as Superimposition and opener Parting The Veil take the time to explore their proggier ideas more fully, and when coupled with solid rhythmic hooks present the strongest ideas on the album. The only criticisms that could be made of Spatterlight are that there isn’t a huge dynamic range on the record and sections can change somewhat slowly. A marginally greater level of conciseness could yield a classic in the vein of The Pineapple Thief’s 2010 album Someone Here Is Missing for Meta. For now, they’ll have to be content with a solid and promising debut record that’s well worth taking the time to explore.
