Up to this point, Sylosis have kept to a road map that relies less on “giant leaps” and more on “slight tweaks” between releases. It’s been a little less of the melodeath influence here, a little more of the thrash side there, and what’s amounted to a deliberate and generally tasteful path forward overall. The band’s newest album, Dormant Heart, continues that trend; it’s a good, not great, effort in the end, but one that suggests said greatness may someday be within reach.
No matter what’s changed since early efforts like Conclusion of an Age, one thing’s remained constant: Sylosis can write the hell out of an album intro. This time out, we open with “Where the Wolves Come to Die,” which builds a sense of urgency that lingers through the remainder of the album and winds up being one of its strongest assets. From the opening few notes, it feels like theme music for the “mission: critical” stage of an action or sci-fi film—grand and realized enough to grab your attention initially, but also menacing enough to keep it, for the most part.
Dormant Heart affords the band several opportunities to show off their chops: there’s the rapid-fire, start-stop guitar and drum patterns in the title track, the almost serpentine opening of “To Build a Tomb,” and some absolutely punishing death metal riffage in the early-going of “Indoctrinated.” But they also, crucially, keep things pretty broadly accessible. Refrains like we get on “Leech” or “Mercy” are catchy (even, dare I say, mainstream sounding), but not so much as to nullify the rest of the album’s punch. (Nothing really does that until the slow-burn closer, “Quiescent,” a very pretty song, but one that could probably have trimmed its nine minutes down to six without much real loss.)
But while Sylosis keep up a relatively consistent level of quality on the album, they also fail to really set themselves apart sonically from their influences. Keeping elements of melodeath, tech-death and thrash each in regular rotation makes for a diverse listen, sure, but it doesn’t really establish a true presence or identity for the band in any one of them. Ultimately, they wind up sounding like Soilwork—not bad by any means, but a bit disappointing given their obvious potential for more as a band.
In the end, Dormant Heart suggests that it’s still a little early to signal that Sylosis are really “all there” yet. But there’s still a good bit to like here, and with a few more carefully placed tweaks down the road, they might have a standout album in them yet.
-Dan
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