Metal Underground.com

Regardless of what some people may think, too much of a good thing can turn out to be something a lot less favorable in the long run. "Dreaming Saturn," the debut album from The Crinn, is exactly that; an album with technical musicianship in abundance but extremely lacking in the areas of consistency and memorability. "Dreaming Saturn" is an album from a band that has far too many great ideas for one album to actually hold onto, causing all the moments of creative genius to simply wither away into the background.

Pulling influence from the mathcore and technical death metal genres, The Crinn use every trick in the book to create a headache inducing album. A flurry of notes played at break-neck speeds demonstrates talent, but all the talent in the world can still be lost when it comes to writing a consistent album. While the record as a whole contains plenty of breathtaking moments, when musicianship is taken into consideration there is nothing that stabs at the mind and makes you want to return back to it. "Cathartic Insurrection" and "Lucid Dream Field" are two of the more tolerable songs on this disc, but even they suffer from the overindulgent nature of "Dreaming Saturn."

Another thing that unintentionally works against The Crinn on its debut full-length are the vocals. The vocals simply cannot keep up with the technical proficiency of the band. The vocal work is nearly as chaotic as the music on "Dreaming Saturn," but they too suffer from the inability to provide a memorable experience. At one moment the vocals are high-pitched and shrill, the next they are monotonous, then in the blink of an eye they are grunting and squealing their way right into deathcore's territory. In the case of "Dreaming Saturn" a more simplistic approach would have worked to elevate the album from being the all out attack on the senses that it is.

With the exception of the opening track "Incipience," which is a rather impressive and more laid back start to the album, The Crinn's debut fails to leave any lasting impression other than that each member is incredibly talented. What makes the members of The Crinn that much more impressive is the fact that most of them have no formal music training and are self-taught, which is something to keep in mind when listening to these chaotic tunes. Regardless, "Dreaming Saturn" suffers from being an over-ambitious affair that crams far too many ideas into the album's nine tracks and causes most of the music to be forgotten, rather than remembered.