Concept bands are some of my favorite musical pleasures. I really love embracing the story or idea a group of artists or just one artist is trying to convey to their listeners. Resuscitate is one of those bands that have their eyes on one theme, and continues to evolve the story with the music. Resuscitate is an up and coming progressive metal solo project created by Evan Van Dyne that conceptually focuses on the world of Borderlands, the popular video game series. Today marks the release of Resuscitate’s newest album “Children of the Vault” is structured how the main story for the game Borderlands 3 is structured – including the names of the planets the song is conceptually taking place. The newest entry is the third release for Resuscitate. The solo act first album “The Vault” was released in 2019, and was met with praise from new listeners and fans of the game. The new album “Children of the Vault” features a massive track-list of eight-teen tracks. This is one of the longest albums we’ve listened to in recent memory, but something I’ve noticed about this one is I didn’t find myself wanting to skip a single track, or quickly wanting it to end. Each song from the record takes on its own light while staying locked into the formula and concept of the overall album. This album is a creative piece of work, and you can tell it was made with love, and quality at the top of mind. I’m a fan of the game myself, so I paid attention to the lyrics and noticed they are lined up well with the story of Borderlands 3. Resuscitate, or more so Evan shows an impressive list of talents within this record. There are moments throughout the record that catch you off guard in the best possible way. Example of this is on the second track “Pandora: The Sacred Map” at about three minutes in the tone completely shifts to this catchy guitar riff that I had to replay about 4 times. This is just one example of many in a eight-teen track album. We highly recommend this to any fan of progressive metal, death metal, djent, or even fans of the Borderlands series!
