I was already familiar with Vetticon's style before listening to this "Gravel", therefore my expectations were quite high. For those of you who have never ecountered this artist before, I think the best way to describe their music is as instrumental alternative metal, with massive riffs and loads of groove.
The riffs are very interesting, rarely relying on speed, but rather focusing on creating an ominous atmosphere, leaving the listener helpless like someone who is being charged by a crash of rhinos (yes, that's what you call a group of rhinos). There are also some very curious melodic solutions, that manage to be catchy and dissonant at the same time.
The only flaw is that in some points, the various sections tend to repeat themselves a bit within the songs, and it seems like thay would work very well as an accompaniment to something, like vocals or a melodic line, that never arrives. This doesn't spoil the enjoyement of the tracks, but it makes it harder to keep the concentration up, especially for the longer ones.
One aspect that we appreciated a lot was the quality of the sound. It is not easy to obtain such thick and rouaring sounds using MIDI instruments, but Vetticon managed to deliver us tracks that hit hard, providing colossal walls of sounds where necessary but also giving variety and colour in the calmer sections.
I will definitely come back to this album in the future and I'll keep an eye on future releases.
