Divinity - Official Website


The Singularity

Canada Country of Origin: Canada

1. Abiogenesis
2. Beg To Consume
3. Lay In The Bed You''ve Made
4. Emergent
5. Transformation
6. Monsters Are Real
7. Embrace The Uncertain
8. Formless Dimension
9. Approaching The Singularity


Review by Nathan on January 28, 2023.

Around the time that this album came out, Divinity was a band I considered to be new and super-exciting and among one of my favorites in the style (my favorite band was Scar Symmetry, if that gives you any indication of my terrible taste). I then forgot about them and proceeded to never listen to them for almost a decade and only decided to revisit them recently, so I have to wonder: what makes this band so initially appealing, but make me feel next to no compulsion to listen to them again for a long, long time? That’s a curious case to be in, especially because as I gave The Singularity its first initial re-listening, it didn’t sound bad at all. Sure, there were definitely some holdovers from the ‘00s metalcore era that I couldn’t fully ignore, but there were a lot of interesting and complex ideas - at the very least, this didn’t feel bland and artistically barren like most of the stuff I liked when I was in my early teens.

If anything, this still stands out as one of the more complicated takes on the hardcore-infused At the Gates worship that was really popular maybe 3-4 years before this. The occasional sudden breakdown and the scales the guitarists use in their riffing reveals that there’s still a couple of metalcore kids lurking among the band members, but the linear and clusterfucky song structures and (admittedly pretty nasty) soloing shows a clear attempt to add an extra degree of maturity to the style. The drummer is a really good fit for people who like a fast and complicated approach that prefers slower syncopation over blastbeats, and it’s hard to deny the dude’s ability, even if he does feel a bit busy at times. Most of the band does, really - I don’t think any of these guys listen to a lot of doom or would really give a shit about “playing with space” in their music. Sometimes, the busyness is overwhelming and it does contribute a bit to the overall lack of memorability present on The Singularity, but it doesn’t explain everything, because there’s still a couple of earworm moments that echo in your head a few times. The choruses of “Embrace the Uncertain” and “Lay in the Bed You’ve Made" are catchy enough (snarl in the vocals aside, more on that in a sec) and the opening riff of the final track is kinda neat. I do have a faint memory of hearing these songs in 2010, but it is noticeably faint, and definitely not as memorable as something should be if I apparently liked it a lot before.

One thing that time has definitely clarified for me, though, is that I don’t like Sean Jenkins’ base vocal style. When he does the low or actually tries to sing a clean note I can tolerate it, but unfortunately, most of his time on The Singularity is spent doing this yellish, middling, snarl-rasp thing that annoys the shit out of me. The worst is when he half-sings with it, almost like Travis Ryan’s non-cleans with way less dynamic or appeal. Unfortunately, he is also a very busy vocalist, just like every other musician on this album, filling every segment of a song with all of the musical ideas it can take. His natural tone isn’t my thing, and it’s only after familiarizing myself with everything harsh vocals can do that I truly realize that.

Although close listening to these songs doesn’t reveal a lot of immediate faults - really, these guys have excellent musicianship and you can tell they write balls to the wall and put everything all out there - but as a result this tries to be too many things and ends up sounding like none of them. Each song is a haphazard mix of melo-death-thrash-groove-prog riffs in a blender with no clear beginning or end except for maybe a chorus that repeats if you’re lucky. This is the kind of band that would sound and look super cool onstage, but you wouldn’t remember what a single one of their songs sounded like after they were done playing.

Rating: 4.1 out of 10

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