Archspire – Relentless Mutation

This is the third album from Archspire, a technical death metal band from Canada.

If insane technicality is your thing, but you also want your songs to be recognisable as such, then you should definitely check out the latest scorcher from Archspire.

Presented and packaged in a lean, hungry 31 minutes, Archspire manage to combine dazzling technicality and blistering complexity, with a surprising amount of catchiness and memorability. It’s all relative, of course, but after listening to so many bands over the years butcher their songs in the name of technicality, it’s great to hear one that remembers how to write a song, while also going all out to shred the listener’s minds with their playing.

Ridiculous riffs seem to war with each other constantly, as the band’s 100 guitarists fight to the death over which one of them gets to plunge in the knife from which angle. The drummer seems to have been replaced with a multi-limbed robot of some sort, while their bassist seems more than content to exist at the heart of the madness, quite firmly doing his own thing in the knowledge that the rest of the band will catch up with him eventually. As for the singer…well, how he manages to unleash his growls in such ultra-fast, clipped, brutal ways is currently unknown to modern science. Maybe in a few more years time when this album has been studied a lot more will we find the answers.

The album sounds like the band were sitting around listening to Whisper Supremacy by Cryptopsy and said to themselves “We can beat this. We can take this further.” Throw in some Obscura and a tonne of cybernetic enhancement and you have Relentless Mutation.

This album is exhausting to listen to, but in a good way. After subjecting yourself to its inhuman assault, you’ve definitely earned a lie down and a stiff drink.