Stealing Axion – Moments

Stealing Axion is a progressive metal band from Tacoma Washington that formed in late 2009 taking their full form in the beginning of 2010. After two years of life Stealing Axion released one Demo, one EP and now they’re coming with their first full length studio album “Moments“.

There are some songs that are clearly in the progressive metal way of bands like Into Eternity and Obscure but Stealing Axion keeping their own style which is something that I liked in “Moments”. First of all the sound is perfect: the drums sound great and the rest instruments also. It’s a typical metal, crystal clear sound with low tuned guitars and bass and both brutal and clean vocals. “Moments” starts with “Mirage of Hope”: technical drumming, heavy riffs and clean vocals in the chorus creating that great song. Whilst listening to the album I realized that Stealing Axion slightly changed their style from their demo and EP releases. Their older songs that were in the EP and their demo are also included in “Moments” and these are “Mirage of Hope” , “47 Days Later” , “Sleepless” , “Eventide” and “Everything or Nothing“. I really liked all of them and all those are tight and well worked ones.

On the other hand, the new songs show me that change in their style which I mentioned above. Those new ones are played with even lower tuned guitars (I believe 8 string guitars with 2 or 1.5 tones down tuning) filled really clever with Meshuggah style riffs (because their riffs are unique) mixed with Progressive death metal style ones and the result sounds really good to me. All the Meshuggah fans will appreciate songs like “Collapse“, and I am not talking about the ones that will say they are a copy of Meshuggah so they are bad. There are always guys that saying such things without considering even the time that a band spent to create something. “Moments” closes up with “Moments PT1 and Pt2” both containing everything that the listener have to listen and wait from Stealing Axion with some more fast parts, clean and brutal vocals and groove parts. Overall “moments” is a respectable release from that potential band and it worth it to be checked.