Alkaloid – Numen (Review)

Alkaloid are a German progressive death metal band and this is their third album.

Containing current and ex-members of bands such as Defeated Sanity, Hate Eternal, Howling Sycamore, Obscura, Obsidious, and many others, Numen is an album that benefits from a wealth of experience, and it shows in all aspects of this professionally crafted record.

Across 70 minutes Alkaloid journey deep into the cosmos, and they take the listener with them upon waves of progressive extremity and technical density. It’s a colossal album, one that showcases an amount of ideas, creative flourishes, and expressive soundscapes that would keep lesser bands busy for an entire career.

Numen is essentially a progressive metal album that’s infected with extremity. It has a progressive death metal base, but expands from this with confidence and grace, exceeding its own lofty goals by reaching farer and wider than it probably thought possible. Having said all of that though, it’s important to recognise that despite the jazz, the melodic resplendence, the clean vocals, and the deep atmospheric depths, the death metal base I mentioned is never too far away, (at least for much of the time), no matter what form it takes. Alkaloid ably demonstrate that death metal is clearly at the heart of what they love, it’s just that their music is not restricted to this. Rather, it takes the strengths of death metal and forges them anew in chains of bright progressive brilliance.

Every song on Numen is a multifaceted explosion of extreme metal artistry. From the reliably recognisable metallic shapes you’d expect, to strange and unusual structures built from a dazzling range of materials, Numen excels in its vision of progressive music.

Numen is an album of epic proportions, in more ways than one. This is the sort of music that is far outside of the capabilities of most artists to produce; as soon as you start listening to Numen you immediately know that you’re experiencing something a cut above the norm. Thankfully, over time this feeling is reinforced, not reduced, and the true rewards of a record like this are revealed. Numen is a grower, and it grows very healthily indeed.

Extremely impressive and enjoyable. Don’t miss out on this if you’re a fan of heavy progressive music.