This band doesn’t let time slip away! I don’t feel it’s been so long since I reviewed their last work and here I am again, having the “Trinity” album in my hands, courtesy of Billy Mullican the singer. Thanks a lot mate!! Before saying anything about this work I’d like to state my belief that the critical point for a band’s course is their third album. “Trinity” is indeed A Lower Deep’s third step and it is really interesting to see where things are heading to with this extremely promising band. A Lower Deep deliver modern heavy metal of the greatest quality. But what is modern heavy metal? This definition of mine is closely connected to a band that dominates today’s metal scene: Nevermore. Now it’s easy to compare every new band to an already achieved one and find a million flaws but that, to my opinion, does not apply to A Lower Deep. This band is not a Nevermore clone. They both just happen to be parts of the same genre. I strongly believe that Nevermore is a disoriented band while A Lower Deep seem to have a more solid core. Nevermore have sacrificed melody over harshness but this band didn’t. And believe me when I say that this band plays harsh. So what’s the bottom line? “Trinity” is the labor’s fruit of a balanced band. A Lower Deep is a heavy metal band in mind with lots of thrash metal extensions. They hit hard but also show true emotion which probably lies with some calmer parts and of course Billy Mullican’s beautiful vocals. Billy is probably a great fan of Geoff Tate’s vocals but he does his own thing when he sings (I won’t explain myself again – see last ALD review). His falsetto reminds me a lot of Saviour Machine’s Eric Clayton and this is just enough of how emotional his vocals are. Apart from this, if I am to compare his work to Warrel Dane, I’d say that Billy is not trapped in himself and for a different album he does not deliver the same old same vocal lines. Plain and simple. Some might think I am comparing their ability but they would be wrong. It’s just the result I hear, which of course springs from the effort put into singing as a whole by each singer. “Trinity” is an album to get you going. It’s fast and it’s powerful. Troy Reid is a quite gifted guitarist. His riffs are thrash like and hide huge amounts of energy. It feels like they’re building up to something and I am always waiting for them to explode. And they never fail me. And here is the point where I should add that with this guitarist, you can actually hear what he is playing. What bliss! Solos are absolutely magnificent! Nothing short of that. Just listen to the song “A grief observed” and you’ll see my point. An interesting thing that may draw attention is the opening riff of “Mind’s eye view” which is actually doom metalish! Of course the rest of the song is like every other song of their material but I was surprised to listen to such an idea from this band! Anyway this is not so important but it’s interesting to me since I am a huge doom metal fan. Once again Tim Umstead offers his bass lines in a pompous manner along with some really good backing vocals, and I don’t usually pay attention to backing vocals. Those who heard their last work “A parable of the thorn” or those who read my review of it may remember the particularly special drum sound. At first I thought that they were programmed but afterwards Billy told me that the drums were processed to sound like this, so expect the same here (drums played by David Lee). This is not a warning. This is just a piece of information. What’s left? Favorite tracks of course! Take your notes: “A grief observed”, “Sisyphus resigned” (amazing title! This band has a way with words), “Out of darkness”, “Numinous” and “The power of why” i.e. half the album. To sum it up, A Lower Deep’s third album is absolutely successful to my expectations and establishes them in my mind as a great band. When it comes to modern metal I will chose A Lower Deep any day of the week among Nevermore or Grip Inc. No death metal distortion, no fancy sound effects and dance beats, no mechanized vocals and no plastic emotion to be found here. Just plain heavy/thrash metal, fairly technical and strongly emotional. Thumbs up for A Lower Deep!! Bang your heads you dogs!!