Liberation’s Fall is the debut release from Boston metallers Collector. It’s an interesting blend of styles with high ambitions, which I was keen to check out.
One thing that came across to the album is that it needed more time in production. Some of the instrumentation is just sloppy. Many of the guitar solos sound like first takes, with performances that that aren’t as laser precise as the style really demands. Similarly, some of the vocals sound like the band didn’t allow enough studio time to perfect them. It’s not that the vocals are bad, but often the melodic phrasing doesn’t quite line up with the beats of the songs. Also at times they attempt to lay multiple layers of vocals, but they’re not quite in time with each other, so it sounds like there’s several bands playing at once. Ah well.
Something interesting about this album is the calibre of the guest performers. On the leading track Between the Two Demons there’s some excellent guest vocals from Vicky Psarakis of The Agonist. It’s such a shame that the rest of the song isn’t the best. It feels like they wanted to create this huge melodic death epic (the song comes in at over 8 minutes), but there’s just too much crammed in there to really tease out any specific theme. There’s multiple movements within the song, but they don’t really connect with each other.
It may sound like I’m being really negative, but there are definitely promise in here. I was quite fond of the fourth track The System Has Failed. It brought to mind a harder Megadeth, which is all good by me. They also varied it up on tracks like Vantablack, which slowed it down and brought the heavy. Indeed, something that can be said for the LP is it is nicely balanced, with faster numbers being offset nicely with slow songs, like the classical acoustic ballads on The Undead Kings. So good job there!
Here we come to the track End This Life. Not only does this track have a guest appearance from Chris Broderick (Age of Destruction and former Megadeth), it also features one of the final recordings of the late Warrel Dane of Nevermore fame. How was Dane’s performance? Honestly, it’s excellent. It was fantastic to get to hear him one more time and his inclusion is definitely welcome. The song itself is also one of the better on the LP, but again it suffers from too much audio clutter.
This is one band that has so much promise. I really look forward to hearing their next album, but this one sounds like it was recorded far too quickly and needed much more polish before being released.
