Dazzling in its execution and brutal in its delivery,
I, the Breather's third album,
Life Reaper, feels like an exercise in heavy metal acrobatics. Densely packed with gutturally detuned guitars, tireless drumming, and frenzied vocals, the album is tied together wonderfully by its production, which seems to chop into the music at odd angles to create a metal sound that's surprisingly angular with all of its sudden jumps and tight twists and turns. Although
I, the Breather aren't the first band to explore the realm of highly produced extreme progressive metal, their use of the editing station as an instrument seems to accentuate their abilities rather than dehumanize their sound. This gives the album an otherworldly feeling without making it seem like it was created in a lab, making
Life Reaper a more accessible gateway into the genre than some of
I, the Breather's contemporaries. ~ Gregory Heaney