There nothing essentially wrong with this debut release from UK progressive metalcore outfit Aliases, It's well played, ticks all the right boxes for the genre... fairly complex song structures... CHECK, shouty death grunt vocals interspersed with some melodic vocalisations... CHECK, jerky chuggy riffs with 'star burst' bits of guitar widdling... CHECK etc etc etc. In fact its a damn fine and very listenable little mini album.
It's just that as a whole this album stays a little too close to its title, and comes over more than a little safe. The complex structures just aint as complex as say Periphery, the riffage doesn't let rip in the way Terakai does, the vocals are set to stun, rather than to kill like Skin The Pig. In short each time you listen through you find the experience enjoyable rather than memorable and your wishing the experience was a little more full on, a little more intense.
You see there is a lot of this sort of stuff coming out of the UK at the moment, and a lot of it is extremely good, and whilst I can't find any real fault with Safer Than Reality, I can't find anything here to make it stand out from the crowd either. They come close in a couple of places, such as on Sirens and The Reality of Beliefs; but even those tracks tend to fall slightly short of being truly memorable.
In short... Close but no cigar
For fans of... Terakai, Skin the Pig, The Bled, Pay No Respect...
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