The long-awaited third studio long-player from the influential English progressive/technical metal outfit,
Future in Whose Eyes? is the first full-length outing from
Sikth since 2006's acclaimed
Death of a Dead Day, and the follow-up to their 2015 comeback EP
Opacities. It also marks the debut of clean vocalist and former member of
ALIASES Joe Rosser, who took over for
Justin Hill after the latter decided to focus on his production career.
Rosser, while not as robust a bellower as
Hill, pairs well with lyricist and resident tonsil shredder
Mikee W Goodman, especially on melodically charged cuts like "Golden Cufflinks," "Century of the Narcissist?," and "Riddles of Humanity." The songs themselves are both meaty and mighty, prone to sonic diversions and spilling over with Gatling-gun riffage, dystopic spoken word sections, and huge blasts of melody.
Sikth's influence on progressive djent metal is hard to overstate -- bands like
Periphery,
Tesseract, and even
Bring Me the Horizon, to a lesser extent, owe more than a cursory nod to their sonic emissions -- and
Future in Whose Eyes? is as satisfying a distillation of their particular mish-mash of metal proclivities as one could hope for, especially coming after such a lengthy hiatus. ~ James Christopher Monger
