Aeviterne – The Ailing Facade (Review)

Aeviterne - The Ailing FacadeAeviterne are a death metal band from the US and this is their debut album.

Aeviterne contain current and ex-members of bands such as Artificial Brain, Tombs, and Pillory, and play a brutal form of death metal with experimental tendencies. Continue reading “Aeviterne – The Ailing Facade (Review)”

In Asymmetry – Ashes of Dead Worlds (Review)

In Asymmetry - Ashes of Dead WorldsIn Asymmetry are an international death metal band and this is their debut album.

Featuring current and ex-members of bands such as The Ritual Aura, Deeds of Flesh, Arsis, Eschaton, Pillory, Inanimate Existence, and The Kennedy Veil, Ashes of Dead Worlds contains a lot of experience packed tightly into its 34 minutes. Continue reading “In Asymmetry – Ashes of Dead Worlds (Review)”

Pillory – Scourge upon Humanity (Review)

Pillory - Scourge upon HumanityThis is the third album from one-man US death metal band Pillory.

Across 64 minutes, the artist behind Pillory batters and bewilders the listener with an onslaught of technical death metal. Scourge upon Humanity clearly won’t be for everyone, even just from that description alone, Continue reading “Pillory – Scourge upon Humanity (Review)”

Eschaton – Sentinel Apocalypse (Review)

EschatonEschaton are from the US and play Death Metal. This is their début album.

Eschaton play Technical Death Metal with roots that are firmly rooted in the New-School, Modern Death Metal camp.

Insane riffs and time signature changes merge with utterly inhuman drumming for a listening experience that’s as brutal as it is compelling. You’ve gotta love this kind of mayhem.

Things do slow down enough for the band to have some good old-fashioned chug-n-groove-n-squeal sections as well as more modern, rhythmical riffing. Even these are firmly embedded in a wider framework of frenzied musical exploration, however.

Leads and solos abound, all centred around the ridiculously surgical drumming. I feel like the drummer should be given a medal for his services to tub-thumping, or something. But then, when he’s a veteran of bands such as Incinerate, Pillory, Arsis and Vile, to name but a few, it’s no wonder he sounds like a serious player in the drumming world.

The rest of the musicians seem to be highly proficient in their trade too though. There’s the guitars of course, so many that we just seem to get extra guitars on top of guitars! In actuality there were only three members to Eschaton during this recording but the sound they make could easily lead you to believe this was a six-piece band.

We mustn’t forget the vocalist either. He has a throaty, guttural roar that focuses the chaos of the music as it rages around him. His voice is versatile enough to fit in with the extremity of the rest of the band and the consistency he provides acts as a grounding point to the swirling maelstrom of Eschaton’s delivery. He also branches out into high screams territory, and these are performed as equally well as the growls.

This is brutal, extreme music for fans of proper Technical Modern Death Metal. When confronted with music like this, most will falter. Will that be your fate, or will you be one of the elite and embrace Eschaton?

Destiny awaits.

Pillory – Evolutionary Miscarriage (Review)

PilloryThis is the second album by US band Pillory who play Brutal Technical Death Metal.

Fast, intricate and brutal; welcome to the world of Pillory. It’s a colourful world populated by an over-abundance of riffs and ideas, with spikes of melody and angular guitar heroics rushing to save the day.

The vocals are mainly gruff shouts but are varied in places with the singer showing he’s capable of more than just straight bellowing into the microphone.

The songs are busy entities with a lot being crammed into every second. If this was all the band did it would be impressive enough, but what’s really impressive is their ability to show restraint when needed. Sometimes you don’t need a million separate things happening at once; sometimes less is more and Pillory seem to know this as they also have entire sections in their songs where they allow a riff or idea to stabilise and develop for a little while before it once again mutates and goes off in a hundred new directions.

For this reason Evolutionary Miscarriage scores higher than a lot of Technical Death Metal as there’s more to it than just insane time signature changes or deranged guitar wizardry; yes they have giant bucketfuls of both but they also know about pacing and dynamics, which are far more important when it comes to longevity and depth of composition.

If you’re a fan of non-standard Death Metal then this is a creative and exploratory album that should suit you well.