So you think it was all over, eh? Periphery demos, best of bulb, Neurothing and Xerath releasing last year. Hacride adding to the list, TesseracT releasing in early 2010. You thought that you’d get a break from the contortion of djent and listen to something less stimulating. Well Veil of Maya would beg to differ with that thought process because their new record Id is an absolute cracker filled with all the sweetest grooves and the most menacing of drum tones.

The first element of the album to hit you square in the jaw is the vocal delivery. Djent is almost always preferred without a frontman as it either leads to incoherent screeches or too much melody. Since Veil of Maya is an expert in the field they’ve managed to find their way around the impasse. Starting with a mellowed title track, the succinct intro sets the album up on a platter.  ‘Unbreakable’ has a plethora of chugging and pre-djent tones splashed with a mix of palm mutes and complex drum patterns. ‘Martyrs’ is almost an interlude after the ferocity of ‘dark passenger’ and ‘the higler’. ‘Resistance’ has faster tempos and the vocals become shrilly and the album starts going a whole lot lower. Bass lines are crushing throughout the first part of the record with a little play on signatures. Till this point one gets an auricular Ion Dissonance meets Textures vibe which gets transformed into an uncannily new sound in the latter part.

For the next few tracks the speeds drop and there is meticulous detail and precision in timing. ‘Circle’ and ‘Namaste’ are the first of this lot with sharp riffs and placating harmonics. ‘Mowgli’ maintains the South Asian tinge in the album and almost sounds like part deux of ‘Namaste’. With ‘conquer’ and ‘codex’ the album draws to a close.

The most exciting bit about the album is that parts of songs could be used as Disney soundtracks for Snow White while other sections of the same track are vicious enough to be played as background music in Tarantino flicks. This dichotomy makes them a uniquely qualified band in the all so abstruse genre. A great addition to the 2010 hall of fame.