Letters From The Colony - Vignette album review

Expansive Swedes stick their flag in the heavy end of tech

Cover art for Letters From The Colony - Vignette album

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With two EPs under their young belts already, Letters From The Colony look set to catapult into the realms of modern metal’s most renowned architects with this debut full-length. Steeped in unbound creativity and experimental complexities, the quintet seamlessly blend intricate polyrhythms, math-metal and crushing death blasts to deliver nine tracks of ordered chaos. Shimmering prog structures and djent flourishes permeate eight-minute-long opener Galax, while the dreamlike soundscapes of instrumental This Creature Will Haunt Us Forever captivate long after its final refrains. Sounding like the lovechild of Jens Kidman and Mikael Åkerfeld, current single Erasing Contrast seethes with unbridled aggression and dynamic shifts, but it’s Alexander Backlund’s proclivity for throat-ripping roars on songs like Sunwise that sees this band at their most bludgeoning. Textural thrills await.