On first seeing the cover, the logo style (and band name itself, for that matter) immediately made me think of the bands doing black metal/punk hybrids.
Somewhat technical, fairly proggy modern thrash. I wouldn't argue about calling the first half of the album some sort of progressive thrash, although the progressive influences manifest primarily in the guitarwork. The overall songwriting seldom sounds progressive rock-influenced as a whole, which is what I typically associate with older progressive thrash bands. Also, despite their musical chops and me throwing the progressive term around, things stay pretty straightforward and linear, so don't expect any Voivodian weirdness.
The latter half of the album seems to have more tangible influences from extreme metal. There are varying amounts of it right from the start, but the album just seems to lay it on thicker as it goes on. Other than some black metal-adjacent riffs in "Vacuous Idol" and some beefier riffs here and there, it's hard to pinpoint what's primarily responsible for this. It's like there's an undercurrent of melodeath in some of the songs without them actually feeling much like death metal or even death/thrash. The vocals (more on that in a moment) certainly contribute, but I also think some of it is the modern production and guitar tone creating a generic feel of homogenized contemporary metal.
That wouldn't even be that bad, since there are some okay songs on here ("To Propagate the Void," "Tongues of Silver," and "Haunted Vigil"), but I found the vocals to be way too forced and screamy. Think someone being a little overzealous when trying to do black metal vox and sounding almost as much like a metalcore singer as a BM one, and you're in the ballpark. Yeah, there are far worse vocals out there, but if you haven't noticed, there's not exactly a shortage of metal bands to listen to, so I'm far more inclined to gravitate towards something with less grating vocals.
I will not be in any great hurry to revisit this, but there's enough decent material here to justify the two bucks.
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