✦✦✧✧ Ambitious and genre-defying, for good and for ill. RON are continuing their evolution from techdeath into full-on progressive high-concept auteurs. Without an outside editorial voice to help them keep focus, the resulting album feels uneven when taken as a whole. There are stellar moments here and there, and then there are moments that aren’t bad, but certainly feel like a setup to something else.

✦✦✦✧ Rivers Of Nihil have really outdone themselves this time. Their third album adds a 70s’-prog sensibility to their already omnivorous brand of technical death metal. This seems to have squeezed out and refined some of the other voices in the band’s collective heads, and while not altogether foolproof, it culminates in a new maturity and gravitas.

★★☆☆ As technodeath bands go, Rivers Of Nihil definitely have the performance chops on lock. The songwriting however continues to be a tepid soup of riffs and screeches. It’s heavier than their debut album, to be sure, and I like that. I just have a hard time recalling anything I’d just heard, mere moments after hearing it.

★★☆☆ Oh sure, it’s heavy and interesting and whatnot… but it’s so slippery. Definitely from the kitchen-sink school of polyglot metal. You like djent? Death metal? Melody? Check check check. An interesting ride, but I defy you to describe a specific moment from it when it’s all done.