Atlanta, Georgia metal adventurers BECOMING THE ARCHETYPE return with I Am, an album that may prove to be their biggest surprise yet when it drops September 18th on longtime label Solid State Records.
BECOMING THE ARCHETYPE has forged a cottage industry out of defying musical expectations, pushing heavy music to its breaking point with horns, Middle Eastern sitar, choirs of sopranos and bone-crushingly heavy riffage. Suffice it to say – with four full-length albums under their belt, the now veteran act have truly mastered the art of throwing curveballs.
The band’s fifth full-length is baffling first and foremost because it’s not meant to be baffling. As guitarist, mastermind and band nucleus Seth Hecox explains, the album is less about reinventing heavy music than it is reinventing BECOMING THE ARCHETYPE. That’s not to say listeners won’t find the band doing its usual mind-warping and genre-bending, but the point of this album wasn’t to transcend the artform of metal music, it was to master it.
“I Am is 100% head banging riffs. Gone are the sitars and horns of Celestial Completion. Instead, we’ve crafted an album full of the heaviest and most technical songs we’ve ever written.”
’The Time Bender’ is a microcosm of the new album because it displays elements of what BTA has done in the past as well as elements of what the BTA sound is becoming. In that sense, it’s a perfect bridge between people’s past enjoyment of BTA’s catalog and people’s excitement over the new material. We’ve been playing the song live this whole summer so lots of ears have already heard a simplified version of this song and feedback has been spectacular. It’s encouraging to know that so many people stand behind what we do and willingly follow us in each step of our musical evolution.”
Recorded with producer Shane Frisby (Bury Your Dead, The Ghost Inside, Widow Sunday, etc), I Am, as the title suggests, is also a statement of an album that puts a new stamp on who BECOMING THE ARCHETYPE is and what it stands for following an inter-band shakeup – one that cleared the path for Hecox to assemble a true dream team of musicians around him.
After seven years and four acclaimed albums with longtime label Solid State Records, BTA is in the unique situation of being an accomplished veteran band with a roster comprised largely of young, hungry, wildly talented musicians poised for their first real test on the national front. It’s a fact that isn’t lost on the band who are embracing this perceived new lease on life as an opportunity to both reinvigorate the band’s wide fan base and tap into a huge cross-section of metal fans who previously might have balked at BTA‘s unbridled, manic creativity.
I Am track listing:
1. The Ocean Walker
2. The Time Bender
3. The Eyes of the Storm
4. The Sky Bearer
5. The Machine Killer
6. The War Ender
7. The Weapon Breaker
8. The Planet Maker
9. The Sun Eater
10. I AM
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