Technical Death Metal

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    Massive Slavery – Global Enslavement (2010)

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    Relentless and Brutal are probably the two best words to describe Canada’s Massive Slavery debut album “Global Enslavement”. Featuring inhuman vocals and drumming paired with skillful guitar and bass guitar work, this release is as crushing and technically proficient as you can imagine for a veteran band, which Massive Slavery is not.

    Since the opener track “MediAssasiNation”, the band will blow you away with harsh vocals, very brutal drumming and an array of guitar riffs and solos that will make your fingers and hands hurt just by thinking on how to play them. The band specializes in creating hyper-fast songs that feature almost equal amounts of aggressive and melodic sections, creating a perfect harmony between the two of the (e.g. “Shade of Corruption”).

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    Origin – Entity (2011)

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    Origin has arrived with their highly anticipated follow up to 2008’s “Antithesis” and with brand new vocalist Jason Keyser joining the ranks as well they prove to be an unstoppable force of brutality. The onslaught of double-pedal drumming and shredding riffs joined by death metal growls and shrieks is enough to make your head explode like that one scene in Scanners but is it enough to hold your attention? These are all highly talented musician but there is the repetition factor that might turn off the listener.

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    Obscura – Omnivium (2011)

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    The man of the million riffs, Steffen Kummerer, returns with his Progressive/Technical Death Metal outfit Obscura, and delivers one of the most brilliant and aggressive releases in the last few years. “Omnivium” is a great improvement over the already brilliant album “Cosmogenesis”.

    With a more focused sound, the band delivers 9 tracks of pure technical brilliance paired with solid Death Metal structures. The songs in “Omnivium” feel a bit more straightforward and do not rely (solely) on virtuosity to be well appealing to the listener. However, this does not mean that you won’t get to listen to Steffen and Christian Muenzner rip through crazy guitar sections or Jeroen Paul Thesseling ‘pounding’ his 6 string fretless bass guitar like a magician.

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    Domination through Impurity – Masochist (2010)

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    When it comes to Technical Death Metal, 2010 has been a great year; we got amazing releases from Pestifer and Decrepit Birth among others. “Masochist” is another album that will join these ranks since it will propel Domination through Impurity to the spotlight in this very crowded genre.

    Fronted by Joe Payne from Nile and Divine Heresy fame, we get a brilliant sophomore album that features traditional Death Metal roots with massive drumming and brilliant guitar acrobatics, showing that is more than the brutal bass player from the previously mentioned band, but a solid guitar player that can shred the shit out of an axe.

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    Pestifer – Age of Disgrace (2010)

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    Sometimes we are greatly puzzled as why bands like Pestifer don’t have a recording deal, but other shitty ass bands are making crap music and releasing it every year. With the current Technical Death Metal boom, bands are appearing out of nowhere and crushing things up with great musical abilities and solid songwriting.

    “Age of Disgrace” is one of those releases that push the boundaries of Death Metal into the technical realm while maintaining the music fundamentals in place. Pestifer is one of those few bands that focus more in the song-structure department than in the high level of virtuosity a band can fit in one song.

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    Fleshwrought - Dementia/Dyslexia (2010)

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    In a band that features Jonny Davy from Job for a Cowboy and Navene Koperweis (ex-The Faceless, ex-Animosity) we expected a shit-core marathon but instead we found ourselves listening to some sub-par technical/experimental Death Metal that features a few intersting ideas that could have been developed further to create a better album.

    We have to admit that the musicianship on this release is pretty awesome and that Navene does a great job at playing all the instruments. However, the problem lays in actually crafting songs that can handle all this brilliance, “Dementia/Dyslexia” sounds completely disconnected from reality and feels more like a drugs induced ego-trip in showing how brutal and fast can you play the drums and how well can you play the guitar, than an actual album.

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    Decrepit Birth – Polarity (2010)

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    When people usually tell me that X band sounds like Death, I usually chuckle and leave before I call that person ignorant and have a heated debate on how that band NOT even closely sounds like Death. Today somebody told me that Decrepit Birth sounded a bit like Death (musically), so I again chuckled and proceeded to end the conversation, however I had “Polarity” on my review queue so I decided to entertain this thought for a bit and have an open mind about this American band.

    To my amazement, “It sounds like Death (the band)” is the best statement to describe Decrepit Birth and their monumental third full-length album “Polarity”. Featuring 11 songs of pure Death metal wizardry, I haven’t heard something as brilliant as this album in quite a while and haven’t enjoyed a (Technical/Progressive) Death Metal since the last Death albums. And since I was not a huge fan of Chuck Schuldiner’s terrible vocals, Decrepit Birth greatly improves over Death in this department.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Brain Drill – Quantum Catastrophe (2010)

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    We usually stay away from Grindcore bands, but Brain Drill was definitely one of the most interesting bands of that genre that we have reviewed in quite a while. With a very impressive mixture of Technical skills and traditional Death/Grindcore, they managed to grab our attention since the first track of this awesome release.

    With a very chaotic feeling to “Quantum Catastrophe” the band showcases their abilities to blend genius with brutality. Taking the genre into new heights (at least for us), the 8 songs in this album can be both appreciated by the technical wiz people and the brutality inspired fans. The album might not have any particular order, but it does a great job into reconciling two genres that have never merged well.

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    Arsis - Starve For The Devil (2010)

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    Filling the void left by an awesomely technical band but with horrible vocals like Arch Enemy we have Arsis. Arsis for the people that don’t know them yet, play Technical Melodic Death Metal in the same vein than Arch Enemy does, but with a more suitable vocal sound that does not get annoying after a couple of songs.

    Hailing from the USA, Arsis is not new to the metal scene they have been around since 2000 and have released three full-length albums before their latest opus “Starve For The Devil”.

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    Centaurus-A – Side Effects Expected (2009)

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    After nine years and four demos this German band blows us away with their debut album “Side Effects Expected”. Their highly technical Death metal took me by surprise when this album started. I was not expecting anything of this quality for a first release of a band.  If I had to pick a favorite song in this album, I would not be able to do this, since all of them are excellent.

    The dual guitars work along with the precise drumming take this album to a whole new level in terms of technical Death metal releases. Every song features different solos and riffs that would keep any metal head with A.D.D paying close attention to them. The changes in between songs are brilliantly executed and dramatically increase the complexity of the songs.

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