PIQAIA – Artifact

  • 7/10
    PIQAIA-Artifact - 7/10
7/10

Summary

Prime Collective
Release date: August 10, 2018

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User Review
6/10 (2 votes)

If you have ever wondered what Shoegazer Metal would sound like, look no further than PIQAIA on their debut album Artifact. Sounding remarkably like a mash-up between Parallels-era Fates Warning and Further-era Flying Saucer Attack (compare album art and song titles from the PIQAIA release and the latter), Artifact delivers a unique package of five long songs, seamlessly blending ethereal vocals and washes of sound with angular and sometimes furious guitar breaks. The songs often lean more to the Shoegaze side than they do the Metal side, so if you tend to like your Metal on the extreme edges of the spectrum you are likely to be disappointed the title cut wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Creation label sampler in the mid-nineties. “Echo” crosses over on the heavier side briefly during a stretch or two of rough, growly vocals, but these soon give way to clean stylings intermixed with the high harmonies. “Landscapes” starts out with a Prog Metal workout, slides into a softer section a third of the way through, and then slowly escalates into another jagged Progressive Metal guitar fugue. It’s a very interesting clash of styles, almost as if half the band were fans of Ride and the other half worshipped Dream Theater, with neither side giving quarter until their favorite elements are interjected into the songs.

TUNE INTO METALEXPRESSRADIO.COM at NOON & MIDNIGHT (EST) / 6:00 & 18:00 (CET) TO HEAR THE BEST TRACKS FROM THIS UPCOMING RELEASE!!!

Author

  • Daniel Waters

    Daniel was a reviewer here at Metal Express Radio. Iron Maiden’s Piece Of Mind wasn’t the first Metal album he owned, but it was the one that lifted the lid off his soul when he received the record as a gift on his 15th birthday. He's been a Metal fan ever since. He's probably best known as the author of various Young Adult novels such as the Generation Dead series and the ghost story Break My Heart 1,000 Times, now also a major motion picture entitled I Still See You, starring Bella Thorne. Writing and music, especially Heavy Metal music, has always been inextricably linked in his mind and career. His first paid gig doing any type of writing was for Cemetery Dance, where he wrote a horror-themed music column called Dead Beats, and when he was writing the first Generation Dead novel he had a ritual where he started his writing day with a Metal playlist that kicked off with “Crushing Belial” by Shadows Fall.

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