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Zephyria - Paragon - Album Review

**A Metal of Montana 2017 - BANDS TO WATCH - Nominee 2018**

Zepheria - Paragon - Released 2017

The breakout EP from Zypheria, entitled, PARAGON, cleverly opens the album with their first track, “The Ageless”. The first track on the album leads the listener down a path of immediate introduction to what talents and potential of Zephyria and what to expect on the rest of the album and of course a few surprises sprinkled here and there.  Cody Betz, Dalton Hill and Dalton Hagen combine to bring us a freshman EP that delivers huge for a progressive and technical death or deathcore band.  The band’s Bandcamp site says it the best, “Born from the ashes of a former band, two friends with a similar taste in music banded together to create tasty jams. With six tracks mostly written while jamming around in tabbing programs they spent the next two years learning and perfecting the songs, learning to record at home, program drums. acquire new members, and learning to mix and master with the help of a close friend and many hours on the interwebs. This is their attempt a debut Ep that doesn’t totally suck. This is, the Paragon Ep.”

Tossing lyrics with bold statements such as “Walking on the fragile thread of reality,” on the first track “The Ageless” we begin to see early on where the song writing and statements take shape.  The entire album is a conglomeration of what makes self-produced albums so unique.  What is lost in sound quality and clarity reminds me of early albums that weren’t so over produced and commercialized.  This is artistry at its best.  What appears to be an unorganized tempo or beat leads elegantly to changes of speed, tone and atmosphere throughout the entire album. It is freshman chaos at its best.

We see some definite heavy prog metal influences as we progress deeper into the album on the second track, “O.D.W” and opening lyrics “When will you filthy humans open your closed mind….” Keep us lyrically wanting more. The only major glaring downfall to this track is that it seems to mirror the opening track in relation to its flow and compilation, however, still a solid effort in the change of pace, tempo and beat keep the listener engaged for sure.

The instrumental track of the album, aptly titled “Roadhaus, M.D.”, begins with a soft and gentle keyboard arrangement that relaxes the listener into an anticipatory lull awaiting the riffing that is becoming Zephyria’s call to arms.  Throughout the instrumental jam the mass incantations of what can only be described as a true Steve Vai inspired instrumental also knocks down some hard grunge plunges.  This is what Cody had to say specifically about this track off of their Bandcamp site, “This song came about after an intense Periphery/Intervals/Polyphia binge. I thought that I hadn’t written enough melodic material (I have a tendency to write heavier/technical stuff). I decided if Mark Holcomb of Periphery could use a lot of slides and open strings so could I. I jammed out a catchy chorus, wrote a few leads and djent style riffs and had full song. A lot of it is formed around riffs and leads bouncing back and forth as sort of riffy leads or leady riffs if you will. It was much too melodic for any of us to sing over (some of us can sing, but not near well enough to play the instruments live and fit the feel I felt it called for). So we decided this track would be the instrumental and restructured the leads to have more of a melodic feel. This song has the first solo that I wrote and recorded and was pretty happy with the feel overall. Roadhaus is a sort of reference to the film Roadhouse and the Family Guy joke about it, the show House, M.D. which I’m a huge fan of, as well as a youtube channel I would watch a lot as a wrote this album called Funhaus.” Definitely one of my favorites off of the album next to “Morgan Breeman”. The next track on the EP.

One of Metal of Montana’s 2018 - “Bands to Watch” - NOMINEE

“Morgan Breeman” is an intense lyrical barrage of gutter vocals that both Dalton and Cody reflect and retract vocally on for each other in a back and forth symbiotic relationship.  My only wish on this entire album is that if more of the lyrical presentation at the 3:20 mark was used more throughout this song and album, but, what I find as we progress onto the next track “Grey Poupon” I get my fill of the lyrical combination I am searching for!  Again we begin to scratch the surface of lyrical harmony that bleeds anger and passion through both presentations on this track as well.  

The second to last track, “Grey Poupon” shows not only the musical range, ability and willingness to show acoustically, lyrically and artistically who they are but also that the boys are not hesitant to lay it all out there.  They did for sure on this one.  The change of pace, the lyrics, the harmonies, the steps and the change of temp, beat and unpredictable speed are what I search for in my metal and this track delivered perfectly.  Again, minus the lack of professional production, any trained metal fan’s ear and true artist can begin to see that these guys have got a target and they are shooting for it ALL OUT!

Zephyria from Left to Right: 

As we round out this six track freshman EP we get a taste of where we began.  The random piano strategically placed to uniformly and chaotically continue to keep themselves separate from others is evident and relevant on “Ex Inferis”.  Again the lyrical challenge for most metal bands is clear, relevant and crisp vocals which will only come with time, practice and a devotion to their music that is obvious and evident.  A solid seven minute track that keeps the listener on task with the harmonies and medley accomplished both lyrically and musically.

All in all we highly recommend this freshmen progressive and technical death metal album to any fan that has an extra $5.00 in their pocket!  The album can be purchased via their Bandcamp website here:  http://bit.ly/2ygQNty.

Zephyria is:

All instrumentals written and arranged by: Cody Betz and Dalton Hill

All lyrics written by: Cody Betz, Dalton Hill, and Dalton Hagen

Vocals performed by: Dalton Hagen and Cody Betz

Guitars performed by: Cody Betz

Bass performed by: Dalton Hill

Drums written and programmed by: Cody Betz

Produced by: Cody Betz and Garret Rose

Mixed and Mastered by: Garret Rose and Cody Betz

Artwork created by: Daniel Danko(https://www.facebook.com/dankodesigns/)

PARAGON released May 19, 2017