Genre : Alternative metal, Metalcore
Released : June 17th, 2022
Label : Self-released
FFO : Deftones, Loathe, Thornhill, Underoath
I don't even remember how I stumbled on Vexes' debut "Ancient Geometry" back in 2019, but what I do remember is that it would be on heavy rotation in my headphones back then for quite some time.
At the time, I was yet to discover Loathe, and Thornhill had not yet fully embraced their Deftones & Muse influences, so I think this was my first time hearing a band doing what people half-jokingly refer to as "Deftones-core".
Granted, what Vexes were doing wasn't exactly groundbreaking from a stylistic point of view and the Deftones comparisons were heavily justified, yet they had enough of their personality shining through the music to not make it sound like a mindless clone of a seminal band, instead bringing the sound spearheaded by Deftones into more metalcore-sounding territory.
As a sophomore record, "Imagine What We Could Destroy" doesn't deviate all that much from the band's direction and previous formula.
The main differences being the inclusion of sparse instrumental interludes featuring bits and pieces of electronic experimentation.
And these interludes are desperately needed in order to help stomach the almost two hour length of this double album.
But in all fairness, nothing really justifies the decision to make IWWCD this monolithic, two-hour long double album.
Not from a musical, conceptual and especially not from a commercial standpoint given the band's rather recent and underground status, meaning that even if there are hardcore Vexes fans out there, even them would probably struggle in digesting this twin record in one sitting.
Which is a shame since there aren't really any bad tracks among the staggering twenty-four the band has to offer (including interludes), yet I feel like we easily could have found ourselves with one single album with half the amount of tracks by preserving only the stronger, more impactful cuts such as "Beyond the Sinking", "E.O.T.W.", "Dryspit.", "Inexerol", "Low Choices" and "Energy Vampires".
I'm pretty sure the band knew what they were doing when they decided to go through with releasing a double album as one big piece of material, yet I can't help but feel as though they've shot themselves in the foot by doing so since this makes their sophomore album a barely approachable listen for newcomers and a daunting task for listeners who are already fans of the band, especially in a climate where people are generally overexposed to short and easy to digest content.
Overall, "Imagine What We Could Destroy (If Only Given Time)" is a good alternative metal(core) record and a good sophomore album which boasts some amazing sounding production work but its impact is dramatically reduced by its desire to do way more than it needed to along with its lack of self-restraint which ultimately makes it a record hard to come back to and whose replayability is only justified by those aforementioned stronger cuts for selective listening.
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