December is usually a good catch up month for many, and the JAR isn’t very different. This album came out in October, but let’s see which twin of the Gemini this album ends up as!

Like with many of the more obscure bands I’ve dabbled in this year, this band popped up during a YouTube rabbit hole. With a little bit of Tool influence, this alternative metal band brings and interesting mixture of music. Establishing in 2010, their first three albums are supposed to tell some kind of story. This is the third installment, so let’s get around to seeing how they punctuate this concept!

• Artist: Gemini Syndrome
• Album: 3^rd Degree -The Raising
• Label: Century Media Records
• Total Track Time: 46:55

Reintegration has those down tuned guitars with the synth fade and when the lyrics definitely feels like a fusion of Tool and Skillet. The fun thing is with the synth effects add to the spiraling void concept, where this song’s lyrics seem to hinge on reintegrating out of despair of some sort. “I lost the light I once had, But I’m sure I’ll find my way again” – is a great lyric in its simplicity. It’s not overly positive, but the prospect of hope compliments the heavy but more Sci Fi instrumentation. Another way of interpretation would work with the title of the album, raising yourself out of something to transcend pain or depression to move on with an evolved perspective. IDK lyrics definitely continue to play in the concept of understanding. With the chorus of, “So far all I know – Is that I don’t know anything anymore – The further down I go, this rabbit hole -The world I know simply disappears”, which is a nice struggle within the song. It takes a lot to admit you understand nothing, so breaking yourself down to build yourself up is a familiar concept to many, especially in the wrestling world, Tetsuya Naito probably feels attacked by this song.

Die With Me is an amazingly educated song lyrically. I mean the line “You Plus Me Equals 23” has great imagery from both Shakespeare and Lao Tzu utilizing the numbers 2 and 3 to represent male and female energies. They even apply Os and 1s in a line, which is binary code, so we get a lot of interesting transcendentalism of finding a higher plane or something with an implied significant other or at least the joining of the complimentary energies.  This also may have been one of the most pretentious few sentences I’ve ever written, but damn. For a cool song with a Nine Inch Nails kind of vibe to be so smart lyrically. I can’t help but be a bit of a nerd. Baptized in Fire this definitely stays in that Tool/A Perfect Circle vein, especially since it’s a bit more of a ballad. The drumming is still fierce and but the guitars are more echoed and complimentary to what’s going on around them. Simple lyrics of being baptized in fire, cleanse by the flame…okay that’s something that’s very easy to get. Especially since, “The Raising” seems to imply a raised consciousness or higher understanding. So much of the imagery has been about shedding your old skin and becoming something new. Children of the Sun instrumentally this has a bit more of a southern rock vibe, and it’s a pretty neat pivot. With the lyrics actually being a little nondescript, I can only glean that maybe this a song about Incan people. I’m pretty sure the Inca were referred to as the Children of the Sun and are definitely a fairly forgotten about civilization which also play into the mixture of beliefs this album has dabbled in.

Abandoned is obviously a more personal song to the singer, but this lyrics alone I feel translates to many, “There was a child who loved everything outside and in, There was a time when my light started to dim”. Even with the cathartic implications of the song many of us have probably felt abandoned by someone or something in life. This depicts the sorrow, anger and grief wonderfully. The instrumentation is Drop D heaviness, the vocals go between clean, growled and screamed to really go through the stages. Everything just resonates so well in this song. Broken Reflection a little more of radio metal sound to this song. Which I think works since the lyrics are easy to parse through of not really recognizing the people in the reflection. It seems to take more of generational implication on broken reflections and not personal demons. Like how every generation makes a different and more broken reflection of the last. It’s a cool song, which makes you think a little.

Sum Quod Eris and interesting little instrumental that kicks off with heavy distortion and some wah pedal action. It feels like impending doom, this song could easily be played to usher in the End of Days. The guitars have this weird echoed hollow effect to make you feel sucked in and surrounded in the depths of wherever this song is taking us. It’s not bad, fits the album well. Best of Me I was not expecting another ballad-esque song that sounds sortuv like Chevelle and Staind had a baby. “Sitting back just waiting for the world to end – Fighting just to stay alive – No one seems to recognize the war within – And I’m too scared to go outside”, a very powerful verse. So this more stripped down song is complimented by very listless lyrics. The complacency of things get the best of you, and you’re just stuck in complacency so you don’t really care. Damn good, especially for the time period we live in.

Absolution no this wasn’t the theme to Paige, Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville’s old group. Another more radio rock structure to the song, but when the lyrics are basically imploring that this is our last chance for absolution. So it’s a concept of making the best of things, try to start anew, wipe the slate clean because now would be the perfect reason. Hold the Line starts immediately out of Absolution and the funny thing is it seems like the other side of the coin. Where Absolution is about starting anew, Hold the Line is more about apathy and how people don’t want to atone or change and would rather die slowly in their depravity. Admittedly, these two songs are interesting, but feels a little preachier as opposed to intelligent commentary.

Where We Started From the guitar has a weird little pop punk aspect or maybe it’s a keyboard, but bridges between verses almost sound like Paramore. Lyrically it talks about paradise and returning to the aether. So I feel like this is a song more on rebirth since we’re back where started from, what’s done cannot be undone, and it’s eternal. Could possibly go deeper, but with most of the theme of this album being a higher understanding of self and intellect, rebirth isn’t out of the wheelhouse. Fiat Lux is Latin for Let There Be Light, and it is a Sci Fi spoken interlude about a secret facility housing aliens. Perhaps this is supposed to be a cliffhanger for what the next album could be about, or more that the perspective of the album was all an alien experiment inside a facility. The spoken word also ends with a Children of the Sun line, so maybe the implication is the aliens were who are from the Sun or something and it wasn’t about the Inca. Interesting concept to end the album.

That was definitely a lot to swallow. On a purely surface level, if you like Tool, A Perfect Circle, Fear Factory, or Static X, you’ll enjoy most of the music they present on this album. The last few songs felt like the lost the plot a little or took things into a weird direction that I didn’t personally feel fit exactly right. I will admit that spoken word interlude at the end to wrap up a bunch of concepts and song titles in this weird Area 51 experimental section was cool.

All that said, there are some really great highs and even the songs that miss still make you think. So they’re not just trash wasting up time between decent songs. Still a pretty damn good album and I will have to listen to the first two and see if there’s some overarching story beat.

Final Judgment: 7.55/10