“So where does Horrendous go from here? And where do I go after recklessly hurling superlatives over their past two albums with the salivating enthusiasm of a heavy set man at a hot dog eating contest. One thing’s certain, expectations from the band’s bloated fan-base will be sky high after the three-year wait following Anareta.” Worship at this Horrendous Idol.
“Irreversible Mechanism’s debut caused a bit of a stir when it came out in 2015, becoming one of the most successful new releases at the time for the now well-known metal/synthwave boutique label Blood Music. The appeal of Infinite Fields came from both its epic scale and technical wizardry, but like a lot of metal acts, the band achieved that scale via levels of choral and orchestral synthesis that would make Jari Maenpaa himself blush. As fun as it turned out to be, it was easy to write off the band as a young guitar wizard’s opulent vanity project, accomplished but ultimately lacking in the sort of levity that such maximalism chafes against. It’s not so easy to do the same with Immersion.” New flesh prevails?
“Since the label’s inception, The Artisan Era has been edging into Unique Leader’s territory like it’s the South China Sea. With Inferi, Augury, and a slew of up-and-coming tech-death acts under its thumb, the label has established an ear for quality in an overindulgent niche. And as much as The Artisan Era’s output tends towards the frilly, keyboards-and-synth-orchestra side of the genre, I’m still keen to hear from their bands, and Washington’s Aethereus have my attention.” Absentia makes the heart grow brutal.
“It’s good to have friends in high places; for prospective subjects of a review here, that means being buddies with an Angry Metal Guy hall of famer. Such were the means by which I became aware of Parius, a melo-prog-tech death metal act that shares a state — and on multiple occasions, a stage — with fellow Pennsylvanians Lör, the toppers of this blog’s 2017 aggregated list. Their enthusiastic social media plugging of Parius’ second LP, The Eldritch Realm, intrigued me as it came from a group that clearly has an ear for talent. Plus, given the record’s title, it would have been an irredeemable crime to not cover it personally.” Tales of the Elitist.
“Truly am I an Angry Metal Malcontent. I haven’t enjoyed ov deep black metal since my early 20’s: I wish folk metal would collectively gather up the pointy ears and LARP the fuck off and, to make matters worse, I’m not entirely sure I’m on board with Lord Yngwie’s position that less cannot be more. While the extreme genres admittedly lend themselves to excess more readily than most, I’ll often wrap up a tech or prog record just wishing the band would take a step back and more fluidly translate their material, or perhaps highlight the weft and warp of the transitions with increased clarity.” Prog-death with extra fluid.
“Obscura’s 2009 release, Cosmogensis, dropped right when I was getting back into metal in a big way. I, like most people who heard it at the time, hailed it as the spiritual successor to Necrophagist and crowned the band the Kings o’ Noodly Death Metal. They have, in my estimation, never lived up to these expectations. Both Omnivium and Arkóasis fell flat, and both suffered from similar weaknesses; ballooning song and album-lengths, often at the cost of compositional focus and coherence.” If that’s not a cliff-hanger that makes you need to click, nothing is!
“…and though the word of the land was good — for blessed are they who toil as to bring glory unto Jørn — there were those that spake a word which decried all that is right and trve, and through their blasphemy bestowed they unto the land a pox which made a mockery of these things rendered unto all by our Lord’s Jørn-ness. ‘Behold!’ spake the Muppet ‘ye heathens ov Canada! Hear me, I beg! Renounce thy false idol and remove its name from thine tongues forever!'” Muppet the Revelator.
“Of all places, Pennsylvania has seen a strange upwelling of prog-death bands in recent years. It started with the much-maligned Rivers of Nihil, gained momentum with Black Crown Initiate, and finally got going with Alustrium. Burial in the Sky jumped aboard with their 2016 LP Persistence of Thought, an album very much in the progressive vein of those groups, tying in bits of classic prog-death a la Atheist and Cynic with the tropes of core-polluted modern death metal.” Penn-death.
“In the past I’ve been guilty of turning my nose up at anything that could even remotely be considered “Christian metal.” The fact is – my own theistic opinions aside – this has left me unavailable to enjoy some fantastic music; a mistake I was not planning on making with Orlando’s Monotheist and their inaugural full-length, Scourge.” Death and the hereafter.
“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.
