“In recent years I’ve shied away from tech death. Sure I loved Origin back in their Antithesis era, but these days if I want noodles I’ll just make some fucking pasta. That said, a band name as cool as Infinite Earths was tough to ignore, particularly in how it invoked notions of parallel universes and promises of sweet purple cover art with a cosmic beast devouring a planet or some shit.” Take all you can eat, but eat all you take.
“Can a death-grind equivalent of Avantasia featuring members of Cynic, Anthrax and Bolt Thrower possibly live up to its pedigree?” The Stench Price is too damn high!
“Darkrypt was helpfully labelled as an Indian “dark death metal” band when I got the promo, which is great to know because I really thought a band named after a portmanteau of darkness and a dark underground tomb was going to be bright, poppy stuff in the vein of Carly Rae Jepsen.” I heard they’re doing a split.
“Most people can’t, for one reason or another, split their talents and passions into two separate wholes. The pizza place near my home in Ontario makes good wings, but they’re not great enough to start up a separate wing business and succeed, so they just do both at once. Some folks are terrible salespeople, so they invite you over to their place to eat some pizza and have a “party” while they try to pitch you an energy drink-based pyramid scheme; the free pizza is supposed to make up for the fact that they couldn’t sell icewater in the Sahara Desert, I guess. Germany’s Defeated Sanity are not most people. They happen to like ultra-brutal death metal and the old Florida proggy death scene, so instead of just combining the two they up and did a split with themselves.” Schizoids are never alone.
“What now?” That’s the question Akróasis, unfairly or otherwise, is supposed to answer. Obscura in 2016 is solely within the hands of founder, guitarist, and vocalist Steffen Kummerer. With the core of the band as we knew it between Cosmic Genesis and Omnivium gone—and that’s an impressive list: Hannes Grossman on drums, Jeroen Paul Thesseling on bass, and Christian Münzner on guitars—Akróasis is a moment for a new statement of intent.
“I don’t agree with my dad on everything, but there’s one thing we do agree about: cruises are the best way to vacation. Free all-you-can-eat buffets, breezy tropical weather, alcohol and entertainment available everywhere, and – most importantly – you’re always within walking distance of your room, so you never have to worry about getting a DUI or throwing up in an Uber on your ride back to the Red Roof Inn. But a cruise with 60 metal bands and over 3,000 fans from all over the world, making a four day round-trip to Jamaica with bars that never close? That’s a whole different beast entirely!” In the Navy, you can rock the seven seas!
“I probably over-utilize the term ‘potential’ when describing new bands, when what I really mean is ‘not good enough yet.’ I’d already resolved to remedy this issue of my own volition and be more accurate when summarizing how I feel about a new artist. Yet, when Lamentations came across my desk with their debut Echoes in the Wind, I couldn’t help but think that these these guys have potential.” Wait, does that mean they’re bad? Or like, good? I’m now pretty confused. I’d better click this here link…
“What do you get when you throw former and current members of Cynic, Exivious, and Dodecahedron all together in a room to record music? If you said something like quasi-jazz infused blackened death fuckery, you’d be absolutely…wrong. Completely. Like, not even close. What you do get instead is some of the loveliest sounding prog rock you’ll hear all year. Who knew?”
“Sadist have been under the weather for quite some time. Once a respectable prog-death act, they did that thing that metal bands did in the ’90s a tad late and released the awful nu-metal Lego in 2000 to critical and fan disgust, after which they took a seven-year break.” Can these grizzled vets redeem themselves after the horrors of the past?
“There’s precious little information to be found about Twin Lords anywhere, and Shift is the New York duo’s debut album after a 2012 demo. Furthermore, the music itself offers no easy points of comparison. I’ve seen them tagged as everything from “progressive” to “sludge” to “powerviolence,” and having listened to the album myself numerous times, I’m still not sure what I’d classify Twin Lords as.” How can we do our job if we can’t pigeonhole into neat little boxes?
