Consuming the Tangible

From September 4, 2024

It’s always a thrill to discover a band that just blows you away with an album, putting them high on your radar priorities to track and follow whatever they do next. That was the case with Black Sites, a Chicago-based metal trio whose 2021 sophomore release Untrue took me completely by surprise, making it to #6 on my 2021 end of year list. Digging back to their 2019 debut only further whetted my appetite for what the future would bring, and now here we are with The Promised Land?, and unsurprisingly the band continues to deliver, getting even more ambitious in their epic blend of traditional, progressive, and thrash metal.

Read the rest over at Nine Circles.

Listening back now (for the first time in I can’t even recall) the slower, alt-rock moments on “Gideon” don’t work for me. It’s a weird outlier on an album that otherwise rocks from beginning to end, and despite it not even lasting six minutes derails my willingness to listen to the rest of The Promised Land?.

Every other song works great, and even the slower passages that pepper the near 12-minute title track have an entry “Gideon” lacks. “Chasing Eternity” is the sweet spot where Black Sites excels, and the one misstep (for me) aside, I’m glad I came back to the record and the band.