Veil of Maya – “Matriarch” [Album Review]

I haven’t head nodded this hard with head phones on in an otherwise silent, vacuous room since I ate some spoiled lobster and heard Skrillex for the first time. I started listening to Veil of Maya back in the days of The Common Man’s Collapse, so when I heard that there was going to be a front man swap, I ate a lot of chocolate in an attempt to self-medicate.

Turns out that there’s a guy named Lukas Magyar from Wisconsin, of all places, who totally destroys, vocally speaking. Biggest shocker is that this guy pumps out clean vocals like a champ. His singing voice sounds like Spencer Sotelo (Periphery) cake with some Casey Sabol Cool Whhhhhhip (Family Guy reference) inflections on top. In the event that you, the reader, don’t know what I’m talking about, that means you should expect some incredible vocal range and a vocal grit that can stop a dragon in its path and make it surrender its lunch money. That’s a good thing, although in general, I don’t condone bullying, but from my experience, dragons are jerks, so I stand by that analogy.

Veil of Maya has always cranked out great technical guitar licks and djent-y rhythms syncopated to the max, but they upped their game yet again. Matriarch is some next level writing. The track “Aries,” for example, introduces guitar slides and arpeggiated leads that progressively transform from aggro riffs to a beautiful, chordal arrangement with clean vocals, screams and chants, all one after another with a perfectly timed electro beat break transition, causing my synapses to clog with the signal, “I-D!DN`T-KŊ0W-¥ŐU-COŲLD-ĐO-THāT! AH, My lęǥ∑.” The wizardry behind the writing makes Harry Potter look like an amateur and David Blaine like… David Blaine.

There’s also a song called, “Daenerys,” a possible Game of Thrones reference? I’ve never watched the show ’cause I love bubble baths and sea salt taffy making too much, so I haven’t gotten around to it, but this may have been the push that I needed. Or, I’ll just listen to this song on repeat ’cause that’s how logic works. Bottom line, this album is a strong contender for album of the year, unless you hate metal, in which case, BLEGH!

Track Listing:

01. NYU
02. Leeloo
03. Ellie
04. Lucy
05. Mikasa
06. Aeris
07. Three-Fifty
08. Phoenix
09. Matriarch
10. Teleute
11. Daenerys
12. Lisbeth

Run Time: 36:07
Release Date: May 12, 2015

Check out the song “Mikasa” here.