The Third Perspective

A side project of Monstrosity vocalist Mike Hrubovcak, Azure Emote's output has been extremely weird. Early 90s progressive death metal, as an influence, is diminishing further in the band's rearview mirror, and like its previous albums, The Third Perspective mixes a lot of elements normally unknown to death metal (violin and industrial electronica?) with the often-excellent riffing. Some of the songs are more organized than others, although the avant-garde leanings on The Third Perspective mean that oblique songwriting is practically a requirement. Loss, featuring once again the vocals of Melissa Ferlaak to sing along with Hrubovcak, is one of the most straightforward tunes, which includes an uneasily dipping violin coexisting with Ryan Moll's shredding. Sometimes the electronic elements fit beautifully with the guitars; Dark Realms has some great moments sandwiched in between the more pedestrian portions, and while Three Six Nine owes an obvious debt to Morbid Angel, that doesn't stop the high-speed riffing from energizing the whole song, making it one of the best on the album. The songs can be hit-or-miss. Sometimes all those keyboards don't combine well with the guitars, and the songwriting always runs close to the edge of being weird merely for the sake of being weird. But as a semi-experimental project, the Azure Emote sound does what it sets out to do: Throw a lot of disparate elements against an album and see what sticks. Like all experiments, sometimes it blows up, and other times something good emerges.