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| #FOR FANS OF: Technical Death Metal, Beyond Creation, Brain Drill, Decrepit Birth |
One of the more politically charged Tech-Death outfits in the genre, these Hollywood bruisers offer up one of the more ferocious and complex assaults in recent years with their second release that only suffers from minute flaws. Ripping through a ravenous swarm of challenging and complexly-arranged riffs played at mind-boggling speeds with enough variance to make for another couple albums’ worth of material, the most imposing part of the band’s attack is most certainly the riff-work that comes flying fast and hard throughout here and becomes all the more imposing when meshed alongside the bass-lines and drum-work. Content to once again utilize the spindly noodling common in most recent Tech Death outfits, here it comes off as far more prominent in their attempts at utilizing deep, heavy chugging scattered along the rhythms so the more ravenous riffs get pushed to the forefront even more. Likewise, the blazing drumming and pounding fills manage to provide the necessary spark to the hard-hitting rhythms that make for such a loud, ferocious beast of a release here that does work well enough to hold off the albums’ lone aggravating flaw. While the notion to have a series of samples and speeches along the album, the fact is the ones here are just maddeningly overdone. Each and every single track here comes complete with at minimum an extra 90 seconds with the extra time devoted to extended speeches tacked on afterward, some of the longer ones here exceeding two minutes of time and really driving up the time here doing this one each and every track. In truth, this should be a 45-50 minute album rather than the 70 it actually comes out to be which gives you some kind of idea about the overlong duration of some of the excess spoken words featured here. Intro ‘New American Century’ sets things in motion quite well with blazing riffing, dizzying rhythms and absolutely blasting full-throttle drumming that displays a vast proficiency at utilizing those complex riffs within a dynamic and devastating framework to become one of the album highlights. ‘Esoteric Agenda’ isn’t quite as breakneck in terms of speed but certainly matches that in terms of pure unbridled rage and ferocity of attack with some of the best drumming found on the entire release, while ‘Profit Before Protocol’ also manages to get plenty of dynamic and furious breakdowns that recall an attack more in common with the recent Deathcore scene than the Technical Death featured elsewhere on here. ‘Guilty Until Proven Innocent’ continues more in league with the first track here with more of those ravenous tempos, dizzying changes and a relentless charge generated through complex riffs and challenging arrangements to make for another stand-out effort. ‘Illuminati’ is even more dynamic and vicious in regards to unloading it’s whirlwind of riffing, blasting drumming and chugging bass-lines into a thunderous, crushing effort that’s one of the albums’ best, much like the title track which best fuses each of the bands’ styles here with dazzling technical whirlwinds sweeping and bombing through the rhythms while being offset nicely by the deep, heavy chugging rhythms featured throughout. The overwrought ‘Saintan’ uses more spindly bass-weaving and slow, droning patterns amid drawn-out chugging that tends to drag out the pacing quite a bit for what is best skipped over in terms of how enjoyable the others are against this one. Thankfully, ‘Mystery, Babylon the Great, Mother of All Harlots and Abominations of the Earth’ gets things back on track with dynamic riffing, a thunderous drumming charge that allows for plenty of firepower alongside the dexterous rhythm changes to allow for a pretty enjoyable effort. ‘Tyrannicide’ offers one of their most deliriously enjoyable riffs swirling through a rather furious series of rhythm changes and rhythm shifts with the odd drum-machine blast furiously charging through the intense rhythms, producing one of their most dynamic entries as ‘Oblivion’ continues blasting through the tight, swirling riffs blazing with plenty of thunderous riffs, charging drumming and wholesale series of scorching riff-work augmented by the first real melodic interjections in the album which definitely proves the band has more in their arsenal than they let on which is quite pleasing overall. Lastly, the instrumental ‘RIP (Memento Mori)’ uses a light piano intro before kicing into high gear by running through a vast majority of the riffs and variations found elsewhere within this, effectively being a fine sampler of what to expect here but definitely ending this on a whimper without the original material. Still, beyond the incessant need for the sampler speeches here this would’ve really been something special. (Don Anelli)
(Self - 2013)
Score: 80