Colorado technical death metal outfit ALLEGAEON have released their seventh studio album, The Ossuary Lens, via Metal Blade Records — and its most significant story is the return of original vocalist Ezra Haynes, who last recorded with the band on 2015's Elements of the Infinite.
Recorded at Flatline Audio in Denver with producer Dave Otero — the band's sixth collaboration with him — the album is described by guitarist Greg Burgess as the most ambitious entry in ALLEGAEON's catalogue: "More technical, symphonic, and progressive elements crept in... all of that combined with more ambient elements."
Haynes coined a term for the record's genre direction: "melotech" — melodic technical death metal. He has described each of the ten tracks as exploring a different perspective on death, bound by a single thematic thread. The album title itself refers to a conceptual lens through which mortality is examined from multiple angles.
The tracklist runs: Refraction, Chaos Theory, Driftwood, Dies Irae, The Swarm, Carried by Delusion, Dark Matter Dynamics, Imperial, Wake Circling Above, Scythe.
On the reunion with Haynes, the band expressed that working again with their original voice felt like a natural completion of a circle. The Ossuary Lens is available now via Metal Blade Records.