DEAFCON5 – Exit To Insight (2024) *HQ*
Hailing from Hamburg, Germany, DEAFCON5 have been active for the last fifteen years, releasing four solid albums. Now they are presenting new effort titled “Exit To Insight“, easiñy their most consistent and best produced work to date.
DEAFCON5 music is hard rock with a progressive aura, think late ’80s / early 90s Queensryche, extremely polished, melodic, clean and very well thought. “Exit To Insight” is sort of conceptual release, with 10 tracks in a conceptual idea with philosophical questions and answers reminiscent of a science fiction novel. There’s a great cover art reflecting this.
The title already tells about the character of the opening track. However, not only the duration of Prologue (3:35 minutes) is special. It is a very personal narration, going back to childhood years in the beginning and then turns into a massive and intense instrumental rock section. Really nice one.
After the overflowing intro track, the first full song Caught In does turn into a really epic dark hard rock song, which has some very present keyboard parts at the beginning, but works with a couple of different sections. Towards the end of the song, Michael Gerstle even has a vocal part without any instrument. This leads to a very entertaining and versatile listen.
The intro to As I Am has an electronic touch, but then the guitars take over their duties and push the song back into the hard rock grounds. The song works with catchy melodies and especially the chorus turns out to be a treat. Deafcon5 can also do emotional, dreamy songs. Disaffection is a lovely proof. The song comes with fine melodies, good guitar work. Gerstle’s voice still leads to that fine hard rock groove. Good one.
On Escape Route the band uses a bombast and energetic guitar play, with some twists and shifts making the composition one of the most proggy. Self-Delusion starts with a delicated melody, but then introduces intense hard rock parts also featuring breaks and atmosphere changes.
Serious Doubts is a very emotional and slow track, driven by the piano, a ballad but with intensity
DEAFCON5 new album “Exit To Insight” will please a varied spectrumo of listeners. A polished recording with a hard rock background spiced with accessible proggy passages, and a lot of melody.
Highly Recommended
01 – Prologue
02 – Caught In
03 – As I Am
04 – Disaffection
05 – Escape Route
06 – Self-Delusion
07 – Serious Doubts
08 – Disequilibrium
09 – Trip To Me
10 – Who I (Really) Am
Michael Gerstle (vocals)
Dennis Altmann (guitars)
Frank Feyerabend (keys)
Frank Schwaneberg (bass)
Sebastian Morschüring (drums)
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