Heartless

This is the third album by the band from Little Rock, Arkansas, released by Profound Lore Records on 24 March 2017, with Nuclear Blast handling Europe. The line-up is Brett Campbell on guitar, vocals and synthesizers, Devin Holt on guitar and backing vocals, Joseph D. Rowland on bass, backing vocals and synthesizers, and Mark Lierly on percussion; the band wrote everything together. The slow, heavy ground does not move, but the way the songs are built leans toward progressive rock. Seven tracks run to nearly an hour, the keyboard layers and the stacked harmonies grow, and Campbell's clear singing stays at the front throughout. Jason Weinheimer and Zach Reeves engineered, Joe Barresi mixed, Dave Collins mastered and Michael Lierly made the artwork. A video was shot for "I Saw the End". It was well received, scoring 82 on Metacritic from thirteen reviews. Thom Jurek of AllMusic called it a maturing that breaks new ground without forsaking where the band came from, and Trystan MacDonald in Exclaim! wrote that it builds further on their standing as one of the biggest acts in doom metal. Andy O'Connor at Pitchfork disagreed, arguing that the mix of metal, prog and doom had been the key to their greatness and that this record fails to piece it together.