Augury

Tómarúm – Ash in Realms of Stone Icons Review

Tómarúm – Ash in Realms of Stone Icons Review

“We as a community speak often of defining and categorizing genres, but sometimes a promo comes along that legitimately challenges those definitions. Atlanta, Georgia’s Tómarúm received a generic “black metal” tag from Prosthetic Records’ PR team, and it falls short as a descriptor for what Tómarúm play. As you’ll surely deduce after giving debut album Ash in Realms of Stone Icons even just one spin, this nascent two-piece perform forbidden alchemy with myriad metallic ores, smelting a writhing, metamorphic amalgamation. It’s that very transmogrification that not only makes this album difficult to categorize but also exciting and satisfying to experience.” Pigeon holes don’t come easy.

Wormhole – The Weakest Among Us Review

Wormhole – The Weakest Among Us Review

“Karen, Plankton’s computer wife, defines ‘seaweed’ as, and I quote, ‘50% sea, 50% weed.’ I define Wormhole as ‘50% worm, 50% hole,’ where ‘worm’ represents tech-death and ‘hole’ represents slam. I rarely encounter genre-blending bands who can evenly balance the weight each constituent style bears upon their respective sounds, but Wormhole might be the first to find a perfect 50/50 distribution.” Numbers, worms and holes.

Equipoise – Demiurgus Review

Equipoise – Demiurgus Review

“Enter Equipoise, based out of Pittsburgh and made up of a veritable who’s who of the death metal spectrum—Sanjay Kumar of Wormhole and Perihelion on guitars; Chason Westmoreland (ex-Hate Eternal, ex-The Faceless) manning the kit; Jimmy Pitts from Eternity’s End and The Fractured Dimension setting the ivories ablaze; Hugo Doyon-Karout (Beyond Creation) decapitating the fret from his bass; Virulent Depravity’s Nick Padovani on guitars both electric and nylon, along with Phil Tougas (Chthe’ilist, Serocs, Zealotry) playing the same; and finally Stevie Boiser (ex-Vale of Pnath, Inferi, Tethys) taking hold of both lyrical and vocal duties. And that’s not even scratching the surface, what with the ELEVEN guest spots included within. What in the actual heck is happening over there in Pittsburgh?” Friendtality.

Augury – Illusive Golden Age Review

Augury – Illusive Golden Age Review

“Before Beyond Creation, there was Augury. At the tail end of the 2000s, the Quebeckers were at the forefront of the proggy side of tech-death along with Anata and Obscura, and their 2009 LP Fragmentary Evidence is a too-often overlooked milestone in the genre – perhaps because so many contemporary tech death albums (Cosmogenesis, Those Whom the Gods Detest, Oracles, Everything is Fire) were just as good and bore follow-up releases. Yes, for a long time it seemed that Augury had been outright replaced by Beyond Creation, who snatched the torch of Montreal’s world-class tech death scene, but a bit shy of a decade later, here we are with Illusive Golden Age.” Back from the tech-dead.