UMUR
"Circle's End" is the fourth full-length studio album by Australian technical/progressive metal act Alarum. The album was released through Dinner for Wolves in June 2020. It´s the successor to "Natural Causes" from 2011. Only lead vocalist/bassist Mark Palfreyman remains from the lineup who recorded "Natural Causes" and new in the lineup are Scott Young (guitars, backing vocals keyboards) and John Sanders (guitars, vocals, backing vocals, keyboards). The drums are performed by session musician Ben Hocking (The Levitation Hex, Aeon of Horus).
Stylistically the material on the 10 tracks, 46:08 minutes long album is a continuation of the technical/progressive death/thrash metal style of "Natural Causes". The difference between the two albums are that Palfreyman delivers his vocals in a slightly more aggressive shouting manner (there are also sporadic male clean vocals on the album and very shortly a female clean vocal section on "Crystals") and that the sound production on "Circle's End" is more powerful, heavy, and massive than the slightly less effectful sound production found on "Natural Causes". It´s a big plus in my book to hear Alarum´s music presented like this. To my ears the semi-jazzy death/thrash/progressive metal of Cynic is a big influence on Alarum, but Alarum generally go for a more straight forward and easily accessible sound.
So, although this is certainly a both technically well played and progressive tinged metal release, the song structures are predominantly relatively simple and easy to follow, and there is an almost instant gratification listening to the music. "Simple to follow" shouldn´t be misunderstood as if the music is primitive though, as it´s still quite intriguing and technically well played music. It´s also quite as eclectic in style and "Circle's End" is overall pretty varied and the tracklist is well thought out.
Upon conclusion "Circle's End" is a high quality release from Alarum and to my ears an improvement over the already great "Natural Causes". Alarum deserve much more attention than they probably receive, and I can highly recommend fans of Cynic and other similar melodic semi-jazz/fusion influenced death/thrash metal acts to check out "Circle's End" as a starting place to get to know Alarum. A 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.
