Adept – “Sleepless” [Album Review]

Sleepless, the fourth album from Swedish metalcore/post-hardcore mob Adept, starts with a spoken intro with frontman Robert Ljung promising that “for the next forty minutes, I will speak from the heart.” The intro then bleeds straight into familiar territory as the listener is hit with a barrage of crisp, crunching metalcore riffs, clean sections and plenty of mosh.

It’s a formula Adept have tightened up over the course of their four albums and, as Sleepless progresses, it becomes apparent that they’ve ironed out the creases of their previous work to produce something that takes the elements of melodic death metal, post-hardcore and metalcore to weave emotion-tugging songs like opener “Black Veins” and “Rewind The Tape.”

Clearly an emotional outlet for frontman Ljung, Sleepless sees the vocalist reminiscing about past experiences before unleashing a blast of his familiar abrasive vocals. Listening to Sleepless, Adept seem more at home when they’re welding together the melodies of the Swedish death metal scene with the more crunchy metalcore bites meaning that, while the cleaner elements of the sound do offer an interesting break to the mix, it does take some of the vicious bite out of proceedings just as the band hit up a real head of steam.

However, when they get the blend right, and they do on plenty of occasions, the result is tracks like “The Sickness” where you’ll be singing along quite comfortably over a barrage of top-drawer metallic riffery that demonstrates exactly how potent this band can be when they get the balance of metal and emotion just right.

Track Listing:

01. Black Veins
02. Dark Clouds
03. Carry the Weight
04. Rewind the Tape
05. Down and Out
06. The Choirs of Absolution
07. Lights
08. The Sickness
09. Sleepless
10. Wounds

Run Time: 42:49
Release Date: February 19, 2016

Check out the track “Carry The Weight” here.