Daily Heavy: The Faceless - Deconsecrate

Through all my guitar nerdiness I had heard of renowned shredder Michael Keene and how his band The Faceless were amazing, but I hadn't bothered to check out the band until very recently.

I'm glad that I stopped watching Michael Keene tearing it up at product demos at NAMM and actually watched a video by The Faceless.

This is some high level technical death metal; after the lengthy circus music-themed intro, the song breaks down into some ferocious riffing, blast beats and guttural vocals.

The musicianship in this band is at a very high level - some of the guitar work here is incredibly hard to pull off at these sorts of tempos. Bassist Evan Brewer is a somewhat of a modern age bass master - not only does he keep up with the guitarists in this band - he has a solo album that is written and played with just his bass and some effects pedals, which is a masterpiece in my opinion.

And then there's the drumming - to keep time at this speed and lock in so tightly with two highly skilled guitarists (Michael Keene and Wes Hauch are top notch shredders), is very impressive.

This song demonstrates the wide range of techniques in both the vocals (Keene handles clean singing, whilst lead singer Geoffrey Ficco brings the brutality), and instrumentation (Keene and Hauch show their worth in the solo section of this song).

The blend of synth organs, strings and Keene's vocals in the quieter passages give the faster and more brutal parts such an impact.

The album this comes from, Autotheism, is excellent.