Tech Death Thursday: A Night in the Abyss
Come with me and spend A Night in the Abyss. It’s Tech Death Thursday!
Your weekly tech news:
- Revocation has another new song out from Great Is Our Sin. Take a listen to “Crumbling Imperium” right here; this one is a fair bit different from what you might expect from the band.
- Looks like we get one more Brain Drill song before the new album releases this Saturday. Check out “Aberrant Mutation” and get hype.
- After a couple long delays, brutal death metallers Breeding Filth have a solid release date for their upcoming album. Give yourself a refresher with “Exhibit of Perverted Lunacy” and look for Perverse Devolution on July 29th.
- Newcomers Enigma are streaming a song from their forthcoming debut over at It Djents. It does indeed djent, but only briefly; otherwise, this is pure tech death goodness. Stars Misaligned is out on July 22nd.
- The new Anata album (you read that right) begins mastering in July. In addition to that, Kaotoxin Records is releasing a remastered version of Anata’s debut album, The Infernal Depths of Hatred, on vinyl for the first time. Go here to listen to the new mix of “Under Azure Skies.”
Deathcore: you all know it, you all hate it. By my estimation, there is no more maligned subgenre in the whole metalsphere. There’s plenty of good reasons for that; musically, the genre has remained largely stagnant for the past ten years or so. The lyrics are, more often than not, complete garbage. Oh yeah, and the one time somebody actually does something new and interesting with the music, he appears to be a god damn pedophile (or at the very least, a tremendous creeper). This genre just cannot catch a break. However, there is a beacon shining in the darkness, a lighthouse in this ocean of shit: A Night in the Abyss.
Now bear with me for a minute; I may be a complete poser, but I like to think I’m a poser with at least some semblance of discerning taste. I, too, started to groan the first time I thought I heard a breakdown coming, but my feelings were completely reversed when it actually hit. This was a breakdown with life and substance. The typical start-stop riff structure was there, but with motion and direction. It highlighted the haunting synth and piano background melody, an aspect of the music I had mistakenly been ignoring up until that point. My initial trepidation now vanishing, I continued forth in gleeful anticipation.
Of course, deathcore is only one aspect of the band’s sound. You’re here for the tech, and A Night in the Abyss more than deliver on that front. There are a variety of influences at play on Necropolis, generally taking a modern bent along the same lines as bands like First Fragment or Vale of Pnath, but with a splash of the straightforward aggression of Soreption and some guitar passages clearly out of Necrophagist’s playbook. The musicians are, of course, fantastic; the solos are exceptional, combining Ryan Knight’s sense of progression and structure with a style similar to Malcolm Pugh. Vocals are solid as well, leaning more towards the “death” side than the “core” with only the occasional semi-shouted line poking through, and the drummer has incredible endurance and a penchant for tricky grooves. (The bassist is largely drowned out in the mix; sorry, bass guy).
The beauty of Necropolis is how well it understands the principles of writing good tech death, then takes those principles and applies them to deathcore. The two subgenres have always gone hand-in-hand, but this is the first time I’ve heard them melded with true cohesion. With any luck, this will represent the new direction of deathcore as a whole, transforming it into something more demanding of respect. I’m still going to make fun of it, though.
I mean, seriously (strategic screencap by Molenaar)
Necropolis is out now via Hollowed Records, available digitally at Bandcamp and on CD at their webstore. You can find A Night in the Abyss on Facebook; swing by their page and tell them to spend a night in the Toilet. That’s all you get for this week, so until next time,
Stay Tech
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