- Let me just say that I am a huge THA fan. They surprised us all with their well written and original masterpieces on their first album
Nocturne, but lost their momentum entirely with
Midheaven. If you loved the intros to
Nocturne, Mea Culpa and Crossing the Rubicon, this album may disappoint you because, with the exception of
Metanoia, every song starts out really slow, which sort of worries me because they are starting to sound like they are switching their genre entirely.
"The World is a Tomb," "The
Path," and "A
Dead World at
Sunrise" have great themes, but its about as far away from metal as you can get. Its hard to tell exactly what THA was trying to accomplish with this because it sounds like an emo band (trying to sing nicely), and not the "channel detritus" nicely, more like a Christian Rock nicely. In short, the songs are not terrible, just disappointing for people who wanted another "Vela, together we await the storm."
-- Additionally, the album is stripped entirely of the lovely classical pieces in
Nocturne and replaced with slow, boring poorly sung, strung out emotional pieces.
Once again, they aren't terrible songs, but the reason AJ left was because he was sick of playing metal and here is the rest of the band playing slow themes that have now become unoriginal with the drop of the classical roots.
--- Even an attempt at their old metal style leaves people wondering what the hell happened. At times, it just seems like random yelling with random guitar riffs in the background and, unlike the breakdowns in
Nocturne, the
Midheaven ones lead nowhere and sound awful.
Nathan Ells just seems to ramble on about society and politics. listening
Midheaven, it is like a gunshot to the head. Their side goal of portraying emotion in songs only partially exists in this album because Nathan Ells always seems angry or resolved and nothing more complicated than that, just failed attempts at singing.
---- After this album its hard to imagine THA gaining any momentum. I know I would have been much happier if they grabbed AJ and changed their style… because, whatever they changed it to, without him is impossible to listen to.
4/10
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