AEON ZEN — Enigma (review)

AEON ZEN — Enigma album cover Album · 2013 · Progressive Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Time Signature
Still human...

Genre: progressive rock

Having expanded Aeon Zen into a proper band, Rich Hinks returns with a third Aeon Zen album in the form of "Enigma". The album is a massive-sounding progressive affair taking cues from both progressive metal and progressive rock.

There are a lot of soft and melodic parts on the album in the shape of both mellow verses and plenty of soft passages with piano effect and clean guitars, accompanied by vocal arrangements that sometimes remind me of Gentle Giant's "Octopus"-album. Indeed there are plenty of progressive rock elements on the album, but "Enigma" is nonetheless a metal album and it does feature some very heavy downtuned guitars, delivering crushing and quirky odd-metered grooves.

As it happens, the best track on the album for my money is the odd man out - namely, 'Divinity' which is a fierce progressive extreme metal track, drawing on tech death metal, melodeath and power-thrash, featuring growls and blastbeats. While the rest of the album does have a tendency to not captivate me 100%, this track is really awesome. I kind of hope that this will be the future sound of Aeon Zen.

A fine album displaying superior musicianship and dynamic songwriting, "Enigma" is definitely an album worth checking out, if you are into progressive metal.
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Time Signature wrote:
more than 2 years ago
I added the last half star because of the musicianship.
adg211288 wrote:
more than 2 years ago
More or less the same thoughts as I had. I couldn't quite bring myself to score it in the 4 stars tier though.

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