Worthwhile, but not as good as 1st album
author: Marthew Snope
This is no doubt a very good album, with the high production value and intriguing dark ambience we've come to expect from MAW. However, it's hard to follow up their first album, and this one falls a bit short. It has a lot of the same snippets/teases of rhythm, samples, etc, but it's mainly A LOT of slow, floating, dark ambience. I think the first album was a bit better at balancing things out, but Shards is a bit too heavy on the ambience (the last track is quite hard to listen to, frankly). At the same time, the high point is probably "A Fragile Truce", with its hypnotic, simple melody and repeated sample. I would have liked more of the tracks to be like this one. Nonetheless, a good album overall, and I hope by album three MAW can do again what they so wonderfully did on album one.
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Music from the edge of the abyss
author: Courtesy of Darren Bergstein, e/i Magazine > AUDIO VERITÉ
"...working well outside classic EM boundaries where electric bass guitars and electric baritone guitars speak their minds as expressively as their electronic counterparts. “Terminal Unfolding” features synths folded and creased into the oft-menacing architecture fomented by A. Jones and R. Shapton’s string-driven thingies, signatures recognizable but harried on by the pulsing circuitries surrounding them. “A Fragile Truce” commences with some tentative synth sprinkles from Peck, but the guitarists’ quick response, teasing electricity, plangent chords shapeshifting and intensifying the atmosphere, reveals an industrial-strength stew of a stripe seldom devised by post-Berlin School alum. Vivid and cinematic, with a sense of reckless endangerment situating the music right at the abyssal edge."
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This is what CD Baby had to say about our first release
author: CD Baby Staff
"Here's an album that lives up to its title. Managing to be both sharply beautiful and darkly sinister, this collage of ambient, experimental metal is challenging in all the right ways. The incorporation of electronic sounds into a surreal semi-metal environment is nothing new, but these guys take it a step further, slipping in theremin vibes and strange programming and sampling elements that peel the skin back even further. Considering that there are six musicians involved in the playing, it's slightly surprising to hear a resulting sound that ethereal but complete, full but not too busy. You could call this ambient noise, but I'm not sure if that's giving it enough credit. This is an album you can listen to with headphones on and catch a ton of subtleties that you may have missed through your standard sound system. Fans of Mr. Bungle, John Zorn, and abstract experimental music will have no trouble diving headfirst into this one."
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