After a decade apart, Eighteen Visions has reunited and released a new album, XVIII (Rise). While the album does not provide anything new or groundbreaking, 18V keep to the sound they know and put together ten solid tracks. The best part of the record is that it truly never lets up and delivers punch after punch until the end. Of course the handful of movie samples used in the beginning of a few tracks is always a plus.

The first track that stuck out for me was ‘Underneath My Gun’ due to the Roddy Piper sample from They Live that starts off the song. The first half of the song has a nice groove to it, but then a breakdown drops in halfway through which give the song a whole new personality. ‘Laid to Waste in the Shit of Man’ is not only a fantastic song title but also has one of the catchiest choruses on XVIII. After the chorus, a breakdown transitions back to the verse once more. One of the shortest tracks on the album, ‘Oath’, quickly becomes a breakdown and may very well be the best breakdown on the whole record. The other portion of the song is quite forgettable however as a majority of the track is the breakdown.

Overall, XVIII is a solid album from a band who has not played together in nearly a decade but really nothing more than that. Hearing new Eighteen Visions is obviously something that many fans were hoping for and should be happy with the album they produced. Sadly, the album just did not wow me enough to provide a higher mark this time around but perhaps this is the beginning of something for Eighteen Visions moving forward.

6.0/10

TIM LEDIN