A popular recording trick is to lay a noisy track faintly in the background to trick the ear into hearing a fuller, thicker sound. At times it sounds as if there are four of these tracks going on simultaneously on THE LEVITATION HEX’s self-titled album. Every track has a whale song of whining guitars swelling in and out of it, layered on top of at least three other guitar tracks, which creates a much cluttered soundscape. It reminded me of when clubs would forget to turn off the house music when the live act started.
Most of the songs on this album are very forgettable. The first time a song actually stood out for me was track 4, "Depressedemic", but mostly because I thought it wounded like Soundwave from the Transformers was doing some guest vocals at the end. Track 6, "A Breathing Apparatus" is literally just heavy breathing with background music. I felt like I was getting an asthma attack listening to it. I’m not sure how it ends, but it was either skip to the next track or a quest to find my inhaler.
I think release would be a great candidate for remastering later on if THE LEVITATION HEX ever gets that far. Cut out some of the gluttonous guitar tracks and focus more on the driving low end that is completely overshadowed.
Sometimes more is less.
Tracklist:
1. The Longest Path Possible 2. Manipuliar 3. Scratch a Life, Find a Thief 4. Depressedemic 5. Internal Chatter 6. A Breathing Apparatus 7. Breaking Point 8. Flirting With Schizophrenia 9. Dream Deficit
Lineup:
Adam Agius -Vocals, Guitars, Programming Mark Palfreyman – Bass Ben Hocking – drums Scott Young - Guitars