Psyclon Nine - [Order Of The Shadow : Act I]

Psyclon Nine are back from a four year hiatus, and their not just back with their best album to date, they are back with the best album within the whole industrial metal genre and probably album of the year.

'[Order Of The Shadow : Act I]' is Psyclon Nine's follow up to 2009's 'We The Fallen' and it seems like a natural step forward. 'We The Fallen' was a great album, but 'The Order' takes it even further and builds on everything that made their last record so great. Everything feels tighter, more dynamic and more majestic than ever.

From the creepy opener "[Act : I] Consecration" to the truly beautiful and lovely closing track "The Saint And The Valentine", Psyclon Nine takes you on the ride of your lifetime through Hell and back. This is not for the faint hearted, it's extremely dark, heavy and freakishly disturbing. The whole album feels like one great big story that needs to be consumed as a whole. The great lyrics, the harsh and eclectic metal riffs, the soaring vocal performance makes for the best story in Psyclon Nine's history. Which isn't to be taken lightly, the bands been through a lot and ultimately the band's singer Nero Bellum's struggle with drug addiction is what led the band to silence, something he stated at his personal blog some years ago. '[Order Of The Shadow : Act I]' brings them back while pushing them forward in the sense that this album feels like nothing else at the moment, it feels so fresh and original. Judging by the sound of it, Nero Bellum is fully recovered.

With danger of repeating myself, I just can't stress this enough. A lot of music in this genre sound very alike but I can truly say that this stands out as being something new and utterly genuine, of course everybody tries to be something unique but with this album no one else does what Psyclon Nine does. They simply do what they're best at and coincidentally that happens to be the best in the scene.

The album consists of thirteen tracks whereas four of them including the intro work as breaks, splitting up the album structure to include small spaces inbetween songs with creepy samples, whispering vocals and electronic noise. And it works like a charm, and gives you the feeling of listening to one continuously piece of work, which it infact is. But that doesn't mean the songs themselves necessarily needs to be put in the context of the album, they are extremely capable standing on their own. From the catchy and highly addictive "Suffer Well" to the awesomely gruesome and pretty 'ballad', "Take My Hand While I Take My Life" the album shows the individual strenghts of the tracks. And when you put all this into one place you get the masterpiece that '[Order Of The Shadow : Act I]' indeed is.

The hopes I had for this record was probably the biggest for any release this year and what a great feeling it is when a record does everything you hoped for, in this case it took it even further. Do not miss this extraordinary album, experience it for yourself when it hit the streets 12th november. Oct 22 2013