Tech Death Thursday: Bufihimat
Do you want your tech death to go hard and expand your mind cells? The answer to that is “yes you do and where do I sign up?”
Before we get into the proceedings, the Mighty Spear has decreed that I must bestow up thee the news of thine Tech Death. Here, here it go:
- Genre mainstays Arkaik have announced a new album and dropped a new single along with it. Check out the full details at Earsplit, including tour dates with Alterbeast and Inanimate Existence starting in early September.
- Speaking of Inanimate Existence, check out “Forever to Burn,” the opening track from Underneath a Melting Sky. If you had any lingering doubts as to how sick this album is going to be after their first single, this should obliterate them entirely. Look for the full album on August 25th.
- If classic tech death is more your speed, Invisible Oranges is streaming the newest from Contrarian. To Perceive Is To Suffer is out tomorrow, and I highly recommend you give it a listen.
- On the other end of the spectrum is Gigan, who have a monstrous new song up over at Metal Injection. Prepare for Space Cthulhu’s arrival on September 15th.
I’ll be honest with you all. I’ve mostly soured on the death metal genre as whole with the exception of a handful of bands who I can count on my appendages to regularly deliver the goods. Even more challenging is the task of finding something that scratches the itch with tech death. To be clear, Russia’s Bufihimat is not something that fits nicely within the confines of this niche genre, but there’s something about this trio that certainly stands out and feels right at home in this space. If you find yourself obsessed with the likes of bands such as Wormed, Gorguts, and Pyrrhon’s super weird take on dissonant death metal, then Bufihimat has the potential to knock your actual socks off.
The aforementioned influences definitely lay the groundwork for Bufihimat’s assault on the senses. They deploy equal amounts of spazzy weird death metal riffment, coupled with a propensity to bash away on the lower registers of the fretboard without overstaying their welcome to risk becoming overly chug-a-lug. When they slow things down, they either unearth some swirling Gorgutsian dissonance or run circles around you with Pyrrhon’s weirdness. Whatever tact they chose to inundate upon the listener, they can command the attention of those with even the shortest of attention spans. The tracks on I are not terribly lengthy nor do they need to be. That particular aspect may be the thing that has me all Lady Gaga about this album.
Should I be talking about tech death here and how this band is relevant? Well, the fret board acrobatics are most certainly impressive, but the showmanship of being all “look at me and all this rad shit I can do on guitar” are reigned in so that the songwriting takes precedence over everything else. It’s the balance between sprawling technical riffs and head wounding dissonance that Bufihimat toggle back and forth on that is at the heart of their modus operandi. If the descriptions being represented here are to be believed, take the opener, “Splited” for example. It starts off with winding and dizzying riffs with a dash of pinch harmonics (pinch harmonics are featured prominently throughout the album). When the track slows down into Gorguts/Pyrrhon territory, the riff takes on a life of its own as it literally short circuits before your very ear drums. Sure that’s a studio recording trick, but it’s a damn fine and effective one at that.
At the end of the day, Bufihimat hammers away and makes your head spin across the eight tracks on I and apologizes for nothing. The snare and kick drums are battered with impunity and have the riffs to accompany them. The vocals are decidedly and appropriately right in line with what you would expect from quality tech death – howling growls with a dash of duel high-lows to compliment the compositions. All told, I is said and done in just under a half hour with no intro, no outros and no interludes. Not a moment is wasted and you never find yourself reaching for the dreaded skip button because you’ve lost interest.
I should also mention that on the production front, Bufihimat’s recording is as balanced as their music. To the naked ear, this sounds like it was not overly smashed to bits by some random Steve Jobs iMac for the sake of sounding pristine. The instruments are clearly breathing to a point and they are not getting suffocated by some rage lord with a pillow.
Connect with Bufihimat on the book where people put their faces on and the camp of bands. I is available digitally for the meager sum of $3 right now. That’s a drop in the bucket for something of this caliber, so be a good citizen and throw some coin their way.
Stay Tech? (Google Stay Tech under images and this is what comes up folks, no joke.)
