Byzantine The Cicada Tree

If there's any band in the scene today that deserves some love from the mighty Metal Blade, it's West Virginia's BYZANTINE. Chris "OJ" Ojeda is the last man standing from the band's original lineup. BYZ's members took a hiatus to be regular Joes with regular Joe obligations, right after releasing its 2008 masterpiece, "Oblivion Beckons". It certainly took its toll in the form of diminished lineup and label. However, Ojeda and BYZANTINE kept cracking independently until Metal Blade saw the wisdom to pick the group up.

Difficult to categorize, progression is certainly the definitive tag to affix to BYZANTINE, whether you want to call the band's work proto-prog, agro-prog or progressive thrash. Incorporating elements of every style of metal imaginable, save for maybe black, from the gate BYZANTINE exhibited how evolutionary its music was. The group could even pause from its hyperactive writing scheme to drop tuneful, pounding ditties with monster swing, such as "Kill Chain" from 2004's "The Fundamental Component" and "Jeremiad" from 2005's "...And They Shall Take Up Serpents".

On "The Cicada Tree", Chris Ojeda again teamed up with longtime buddy and BYZANTINE ghostwriter, Jamie P. Rakes. The band allowed fans studio access via random video streaming events, reducing the intensity behind the recording process. If each BYZANTINE album has been one step further than the last with newer influences, newer instrumental trimmings and bolder songwriting, "The Cicada Tree" might be the BYZ's most ear-pleasing slab yet. Nine sparkling, genre bending tracks with a couple of covers at the end—a prog-chopped take on FISHBONE's "Servitude" being far superior to a goofy haul of THE CARS's whack-off classic, "Moving in Stereo".

01. New Ways to Bear Witness
02. Vile Maxim
03. Map of the Creator
04. Dead as Autumn Leaves
05. Trapjaw
06. The Subjugated
07. Incremental
08. The Cicada Tree
09. Verses of Violence
10. Moving in Stereo (THE CARS cover)
11. Servitude (FISHBONE cover)