I saw The Seed of Self-Destruction popping up a lot last year on the internet, praised as a really good modern metal EP, so I took a listen. It's all pretty damn good, but The Deep Blue Silent stole the show completely on that five-track record for me.
Allt comes from the modern progressive metal wave of djent and thall, alongside bands such as Invent Animate and ERRA, and it's clear they have their own sound within this niche of modern metal. They lean into the thall side of things more than their contemporaries, especially on the guitar front. The Deep Blue Silent is, for me, the song that best represents that blend of subgenres.
Immediately from the get-go, you can hear the thall influences with the juxtaposition of clean reverb-laden ambient background leads and heavy distorted foreground lead and rhythm parts. The verse adds in the vocals, a super respectable scream tone that fits the sound well, as well as a tasteful djent riff underneath.
Chorus is surprisingly hard to tell, but eventually I figured out which part is the chorus since it's the only section that repeats. Post-chorus gives us a nice blast beat section, followed by the breakdown. This is the part that killed it for me, I loved the call-and-response riffage between the pure chugs and the fun lead riffs, a really well put together moment.
Past that, there's a bridge that has a really cool guitar section afterwards. I love the super smart use of repeated notes and adding the left stereo to double up halfway through (sorry mono listeners, but also why are you listening to metal in mono?). There's a small break where you finally get to hear the production in the background, the choir samples and the lo-fi leads, and you can really tell that it's modern metal. The song does wrap up quite nicely, but there's nothing much too new or crazy as they tie it up.
Allt put together a very unique blend of modern metal styles for this song that I have yet to really find anywhere else. It remains a great find for me, one of the better cuts out of the entirety of modern metal in the 2020s. Definitely a must-listen if you're even just a bit into progressive metalcore or djent.
Rating: 4/5
