The 2019 Arsies: February 14, 2019

February 14, 2019

Emotion	●●○	●●●
Memorability	●●●	●●●
Replayability	●●●	●●●
Innovation	●●●	●●●
Pace	●●●	●●●
Shredding	●●●	●●○
Vocals	●●●	●●●
Production	●●○	●●●
		✓

Sometimes, winning the cointoss means that a band is vulnerable to being overwhelmed by their competition. Other times, it mean that a band can set a dispiritingly high bar. The latter is definitely the case in this Valentine's Bloodbath edition of the Arsies, as TesseracT go first and salt the earth for The Human Abstract. Altered State's inventive and refined djent sounds even fresher when paired with The Human Abstract's studious neoclassicism. Even more crucially, the TesseracT gives me the feels (seriously chills, y'all)... something that THA struggle with in general (although Antebellum comes close to that kind of evocativeness). I didn't even have to mention production values to decide this one.
Tomorrow, the week ends with our penultimate match, a furious prog battle between Intronaut and BTBAM. Oof.