Cycle Of Suffering

The world is in chaos. Societies are angry and divided. The future looks bleak. But all is not lost: music still has the power to light up those ominous, cloudy skies. Masters of enlightened, neck-wrecking turbo-thrash, Sylosis is returning to the barricades after four years of silence, armed with its strongest album yet and a renewed sense of purpose. The fightback against the dying of the light starts here. Formed in Reading at the turn of the millennium, Sylosis swiftly stood apart from everything else that was happening in the British metal scene at that time. As the metalcore hordes began to dominate the mainstream, guitarist and chief songwriter Josh Middleton pursued a singular, defiant course, blending the machine-gun precision of thrash with the monstrous power of modern extremity and frequent flashes of progressive flair. Exploding into view with debut album Conclusion Of An Age in 2008, Sylosis established itself as a major player in the UK scene with live shows that swiftly became notorious for their riotous, celebratory vibe.

There are huge melodies and gleaming hooks erupting throughout this sustained, 50-minute burst of cutting-edge brutality, but Cycle Of Suffering is bold and exploratory too: everything from slow-burning cautionary tale Calcified to the acoustic-led but venomous Arms Like A Noose indicates that Sylosis has evolved as a band, while its leader's song writing blade has never been sharper. Cycle Of Suffering simply the best thing that Sylosis has ever produced.