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Native Construct: Quiet World
Native Construct - Quiet World CD Album Review

Native Construct: Quiet World

Progressive Metal
4.5/5.0

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Metal Blade Records
Words: Craig Hartranft
Added: 09.04.2015

The beginnings of Native Construct and their debut album, Quiet World, go back to 2011 at the Berklee College of Music. The trio of musicians, Myles Yang, Robert Edens, and Max Harchik devised the concept and music over several years recording in home studios while, at the same time, pursing their studies. That's some work ethic.

Native Construct Quiet World Band Photo

Native Construct

Now considering the prestige of Berklee and the talent therein, you can expect some significant musical geekery from Native Construct. Quiet World is next generation progressive metal with an old school soul. You will hear as much Between the Buried and Me and Coheed and Cambria, very influential to composer Myles Yang, as you would the Beatles' Yellow Submarine. The mixtures of styles and textures is nearly eclectic. Thrash. Theater music. Symphonic layers. Death metal and vocals. Jazz fusion. Light piano to inspired soaring guitar solos. By example, the first song, Mute, begins with some djent thrash, and you expect confusion to ensue. Except, then this bouncy piano rolls in. What? But this is how the album goes. Quiet World is complex and creative, innovate and intriguing. Throw out what you think about progressive metal and changes in time signatures, tempos, and such. You won't keep up.

Maybe there is some normalcy here. Your Familiar Face has a lighter context, but with all this engaging rhythms underneath and some vocal arrangements that could have been created by Freddie Mercury and Queen. Forget normalcy. The Spark of the Archon and Chromatic Aberration are the premier pieces here, prog ingenuity with massive movements, twists and turns. The former has moments of softness and subtlety, only to be matched by outbursts thrashy chaos; the latter seems all over the place: like some ball of organized cacophony, heavy metal jazz fusion over a hint of orchestration. This is some wild stuff. My only objection is the use of the death vocals in some songs, but I understand their place. The seem largely the voice of the antagonist in the story. And the conceptual story is nearly as complex as the music. You can read about it below. Suffice to say, Native Construct is band of richly talented musicians and Quiet World quite the innovative and challenging achievement.

Quiet World - The Story

"Quiet World is about a guy who loves a girl. The guy is a bit of an odd and eccentric person – an outcast. He's also a mute, and a little unstable, as it turns out. The girl doesn't return his feelings, but he can't bring himself to let go. As his unrequited passion for her devolves into obsession and eventual resentment, his mind begins to slip further and further away. He convinces himself that he can't be loved because of his condition and abnormalities. So he decides to create for himself a new, fantastic world of which he has complete control – a world where there are no oddballs or outcasts. A world where everyone is surrounded by people who are just like themselves: a much quieter world.

"It's at this point that the first track of the album, "Mute," begins. And it turns out that many of the subjects of his new world are not as content living this way as he is. In the second track we see a new character, the Archon, rise up and unite his people in the clouds with the once distant people in the sea. He leads an opposition to "Sinister Silence," as the people come to call him. The rest of the album unfolds with events within the "Quiet World" and manifestations of the enduring struggle between the Archon and Sinister Silence. The lone exception is track number four, "Your Familiar Face," which steps out of this world for a moment to give a closer look at the events prior to the first track and the tragedy of Sinister Silence."

Native Construct - Mute


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In Short

Suffice to say, Native Construct is band of richly talented musicians and Quiet World quite the innovative and challenging achievement.

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