Ex-As I Lay Dying axeman, Nick Hipa, and former Allegaeon guitarist, Ryan Glisan, joined forces in 2017. One assumes they bonded over a love of Meshuggah and Gojira. We’ve heard thousands of bands emerge in the last ten years with these ingredients, and many of them are already in the forgotten pile. Can a group with these distinguished veterans fare any better for album number three?
The coordination between double-kick drums and rapid guitar rhythms in the opening title-track aims for Meshuggah’s standard of precision and comes close to matching it from the first note. This is impressive, but it leaves you with the nagging doubt it’ll be another pastiche of the Swedish legends. Fortunately, this is a band that employ mid-range riffing techniques as well as the inevitable chugging action on the bottom two strings. Vocalist, Benton McKibben, operates like a bulldog in a cage who believes he can chew through the metal bars. The expressive fretboard patterns of both guitarists show an appreciation for the progressive tech death of Allegaeon as much as prog metal.
Mire are good at trapping you in, uh… the mire. Their dystopian aesthetic allows you to see past the digital perfection of their music. After all, that’s the point. How can you beat a machine that needs no sleep or anything beyond clear instructions? Yet it’s not all disenchantment in ‘Cultures of Violence’. Seldom can we be thankful for a band using metalcore as way of broadening the canvass, but it works here when McKibben moves into a standard attempt at melody. His higher register is average but still effective, and you know he’ll go back to the growling voice. Those doubts you had about this music being suitable for adults can be banished on one listen to ‘The Master’. If anything, Mire deserve credit for treating their vocal lines and lyrics with great care. Try to resist the anthemic pull of the chorus here: “I am the master I decide what I will see / I watched the Jester, pull a mask and lead me where he needs.” It’s hard to resist, isn’t it? The esoteric guitar solo is just as enticing, and it helps that the heavy parts rage like mercury rising to the top of a thermometer.
Unlike Meshuggah, the Denver group do not believe repetition is the key to an outer body experience. Gojira are probably a better reference in ‘Where I Belong’. The rhythmic execution is sharper than a Samurai blade. Even as one of a million precision-grade metal artists from the djent school of riffing, one must concede that Pale Reflection is too good to be dismissed as reductive. Can you imagine the extra enjoyment you could extract from this music if it had a modicum of originality?
“All we are is dust in the end / There’s no way of hiding from it,” intones McKibben in an imaginative mid-range robotic voice. It’s an unusual way to locate melody, but it works in ‘Great Pain’. Unfortunately, the interest levels suffer in the last quarter. Imagine comparing the hundredth time you watched a slasher film with your inaugural experience. The effect wears off, doesn’t it? Even the colourful fretwork in ‘Human Condition’ struggles to do anything beyond raising an eyebrow when your instinct is to yawn. The mechanical drum engineering also irks by the time you reach track seven (see ‘Significance Plague’). Twenty years ago, this would’ve produced a lot of agreeable chin-stroking, but it does nothing of the sort in 2026. The fact is there are too many bands playing this type of music, and saturation is the inevitable consequence. But there’s no doubt it’d be thrilling in a live environment. Would you stand with your arms folded, or would you feel your joints moving in delight to the complex grooves and squirming guitar shapes of closing track, ‘Send Us’?
“They’re good at what they do,” is a sentiment we hear a lot these days, but it applies here. Why dislike something for being unoriginal when it can still give you what you need?
Kirk Houghton
Verdict
Release Date: 10/04/2026
Record Label: Self-released
Standout tracks: Cultures of Violence; The Master; Great Pain
Suggested Further Listening: Khroma – Ex Nihilo (2021), Ascend the Helix – Spiral of Reflection (2023), Born of Osiris – Through Shadows (2025)