Fall Below the Earth

I don't know much about this act, except that this is apparently a one-man band from Texas, just down the way from me. Fall Below the Earth is a collection of long, complex songs that cram in a lot of technicality and quite a bit of pretentiousness. None of these songs really hold together any identity, just kind of being collections of choppy, complicated riffs. The guitar tone is washed through a ton of effects to produce an extremely compressed, overdriven sound that is honestly hard to take for the length of a song, much less this entire album. A lot of the riffage here is solid, and the compositions may appeal more to diehard tech Death fans, but the album as a whole leaves me cold. Interesting, but not gripping.