The new project formed by two members of both Pyrrhon and Seputus explores a slower style than what we’re used to with those guys. The duo of Moore and Schwegler is joined by a violinist and the instrument adds an extremely sorrowful layer to their compositions.
Their debut extended play is made up of four extended compositions with a lot of stuff happening. The better comparison I managed to find is that it’s midway between the atmospheric brutal death of Ulcerate and the sadness found in My Dying Bride’s heaviest material. It’s a pretty original take on death/doom as it’s mixing both the technical and angular side of modern death metal and the simplified, raw aggression of primal doom/death. The riffs are dense and often repeated (see “The Shadow in the Seer”) till your brain is mush and then, a violin break appears and the mood is transformed. It's not always quite cohesive but I must say I thought the violin is the best thing about their music.
The last track starts with a calm, soothing introduction before delivering loads of heavy riffs. Sometimes it almost sounds like they’re playing slowed down groovy deathcore, it’s peculiar. It doesn’t work all the time but there’s a lot of good ideas found on the record. The fact they succeeded at making a novel sound work is a feat in itself, let’s see if they’ll manage to go somewhere really interesting with their sound.
We have
a long standing technical death metal tradition to respect in Québec
and Intonate are the brand new soldiers of this style. Their debut
album takes the flexible bass fluctuations of Beyond Creation and
push it towards a more dissonant and dark direction. One thing is for
sure, the four musicians were able to totally play their way through
the demented infernal landscape shown on the cover art with their
instrumental prowess.
It’s
a bit hard to distinguish progressive death from technical death as
they’re often closely related. Intonate explores a lot of
sensibilities here but we’re far from the ruthless and inane
technicality of Necrophagist. It’s more akin to Spawn of
Possession, Obscura or even the atmospheric obscurity of Ulcerate.
The lyrics written by guitarist Ulysses Fiorito are smart and often conceptual (some tracks are about the ancient Akkadian empire and the city of Uruk) or based around science fiction and philosophy. They're a good fit to the aural side of the band.
The bass is thick, played by a quasi virtuoso and we’re
far from the annoying sound displayed by Dominic Lapointe on an album
like The Aura. The Nucciarone brothers (Dominic on drums and Nicola
on guitar/vocals ), just like the Duplantier brothers of Gojira, are
one hell of a fraternal duo. The drumming is intense, precise yet
subtle and the airy mastering gave it the necessary place to grow.
Sure, there’s guitar solos but they don’t go overboard and become
a burden to go through. While they remain a technically sound band,
they still deliver loads of memorable moments such as “Retribution
Waters” with the grievous harsh vocals performance of Nicola.
Some
tracks are lengthy but even “Eternal Seed” and its 13 minutes
doesn’t seem like a never-ending ordeal to listen to. It flows
very well and even if I think it’s an exhausting style of music due
to its demanding nature, I managed to listen to the album several
times without being bored and helpless. All in all, Intonate’s
debut album, while not totally something fresh or new is an excellent
offering of intelligent spatial death metal and someone should sign
these guys as soon as possible!
Chthe'ilist The up and coming death metal from the Montréal south shore were back at the Katacombes after their impressive first gig at the first edition of Wings of Metal last year. They still don't have a bassist even though they're looking for one, kind of a shame that there's nobody who can join them, I would if I was a musician! Nonetheless, it's no biggie when there's two talented lead guitarists!
Their thirty minute set killed everyone, the crowd was already numerous for the openers and that's always cool. Their crushing death metal sound is pretty damn good, it's technical without being showy, shallow and noodly (like their drummer's main death metal band Beyond Creation). After their great demo (try to pronounce the title), they're gonna release a full length (when? No idea, but soon) and I know they're shopping for a label and have many prestigious options (Profound Lore? Dark Descent? Roadrunner?).
Their stage presence was intense, mostly due to their energetic and talented session singer (Laurent Bellemare from Tribunal). The two guitarists had a good chemistery going on, they like the same stuff and it shows.
Alongside the second opener of this evening, they're the future of the Québec death metal scene, they're evolving with extrinsic influences (mostly from Finland, they covered a Demilich song) instead of praising at the altars of bands like Gorguts or Kataklysm.
A band to follow, for sure. Guided by Tougas, a shy and quiet talented promising young man, Chthe'ilist is destined to great deeds.
8,5/10
Phobocosm With their debut full length scheduled to be released this Autumn by Dark Descent Records, Phobocosm are slowly making a name for themselves not only locally but internationally. The Montréal quartet played their, I believe, fifth gig tonight. I was lucky to see their first one back in 2012 when they opened for Adversarial.
Their brand of ultra dark death metal kills, it's midpaced, dirty but with a perfect and professional guitar tone. The drummer was also a beast behind his kit. The leader and composer Samuel Dufour formely of Towards Darkness and Vengeful is supported by another guitarist and it's adding a layer of evil atmosphere that's most welcome.Their songs are long, heavy and their sound inspired by the likes of Incantation and fellow cavernous death metal bands is distinct in the Québec scene. Maybe they're not quite original in the grand scheme of things but they sure know how to write somber catchy hooks and that's all that matters
Just like most of the Dark Descent roster, Phobocosm is quality stuff. Simply waiting for their debut album Deprived to come out so they can receive their due praise.
8/10
Ulcerate Since Inter Arma dropped off the tour for some dates, Ulcerate were able to play a longer set to compensate! The New Zealand power dissonant trio offered almost eighty minute to the enthusiastic crowd. I've missed their first Montréal gig two years so it was a first time for me and I quite enjoyed the experience. I'm really not a fan of the technical death metal genre but Ulcerate is one of the exceptions since they don't rely on showy acrobatics and instead are subtle about the whole thing. I had no idea how well their atmospheric style would be transposed to a live setting since they're only three musicians but I was pleasantly surprised.
I think it works quite well since the guitars aren't quite the focus of their music, Jaime Saint Merat (drums, artwork...) is the obvious core of the entity. He's perhaps the best drummer in modern death metal, he destroys all competition. It seems that everything is build around his drumming to create a death metal harmonic monster. The three members are all bald weird looking dudes, it's like they meld together to form a six arms being completely overwhelming his opponents with his earnest formula.
The songs from their latest album Vermis were really good live, even tough The Destroyers of All is perhaps my favorite release of theirs, it's harder to replicate these songs live since they're so intricate. Vermis, on the other hand, feels a bit like a more concise, maybe simplified version of TdoA. They're live friendlier and it's apparent throughout the set. They finished the evening with Everything is Fire though and that's probably their best song so it was an ideal choice.
Even though I missed the sixth game of the Montréal/Boston series, the Habs won so all is well! The dissonant pulse emanating the Katacombes helped the team defeat the Bruins! 9/10
My fellow moderator and veteran reviewer BastardHead
challenged me to get out of my comfort zone and review a technical
death band, he proposed Blood Dress's first album Beyond the Flesh
and he was right to do so since
it's a very good release. The gorgeous but simple cover art hides a very competent new quintet. While I never heard an Argentinian death
metal band before, I can safely that these guys have nothing to envy
to their European or North American peers. In fact, it should be the
opposite, they took the often lifeless, cold and mechanical genre and
made it a bit warmer than usual. Okay, their name is not the best metal alias ever but they have a cool enough logo to make up for that.
The main reason why
I liked this band is the fact they're a student of the Anata School
of Technical Death Metal and not a Necrophagist disciple. Yes, it's
technical but for a purpose and it's not only for showing off. That's
the main issue I have with this genre. Songwriting is the most
important thing in music and metal is no exception and I feel that
most of the genre is wanking for the sake of showing off the mad
skills you got for practicing 10 hours a day in your parents'
basement while eating Froot Loops. While entry level dwellers are
waiting for the new Suicmez guitar hero album, Anata slowly died. The
world is a sad place.
Although
they're not strangers to frenetic leads and blastbeats drums
patterns, Blood Dress can actually write songs and there's a real
will to break out of the boundaries with the introduction and the
interlude, I definitely liked this little aspect of the band even though I
dislike an avant garde band like Unexpect. I thought it should had
been a bigger part of their sound. They have some clean guest singers
in some songs like in the amazing Will I Die, by
far my favorite track on the album, it's epic and reminds me of
progressive death metallists Opeth. This song truly made the album
for me, I absolutely liked the mix of clean and harsh vocals and it
didn't sound like a modern, asinine and commercial track that a big
label requested. Hell, the band isn't signed (they fucking deserve
the support of a label)
There's
a bigger emphasis on the riffs than in many tech bands and the solos
aren't 4 minutes long and can still be enjoyable. The songs can be
fast but they like to slow things down like Obscura would but they're
not quite inspired by later era Death. Their 2 guitarists have a nice
chemistry and I liked their shredding but outside of the special
elements I already mentioned, the band is not quite original and
inventive. Their slower than usual tech/progressive death metal
tracks are good but doesn't deviate from the norm. Not that I wish
they would...Okay, yes I do but that's only because I'm not a fan of
this kind of death metal and I heard what they can do when they
experiment a little. The vocals aren't abnormal for the genre but they're
nothing special and are easily forgettable. As many other tech bands,
they're not the focus point of the music even if they're competent
enough. They remind me of Ross Dolan (Immolation) but with less power
and range. Just like the other instruments, there's nothing bad to
say to say about the vocals except that they're a bit unmemorable.
Beyond the Flesh is still a good album in
its own right and if you enjoy their genre, you'll definitely find
something to like here. The production is very good and fully
professional, the musicians are skilled and there's enough
technicality to please the fans of guitar masturbation and enough
melody in the songwriting to please a huge enough percentage of the
naysayers. For a first release, the guys properly established their
sound with a compact and solid debut, they surely deserve the
attention if you enjoy good riffs with your technical death metal. Blood Dress' homepage BastardHead's blog (by the way, his taste sucks!)
