Okay, so I really tried to like the new Archspire album, even though it should be no surprise that it sits well outside my comfort zone of death metal. Dave Otero, the albums main producer, is an absolute beast here and has found his niche; producing several of the most recent releases by Cattle Decapitation and Allegaeon. Like those bands, this album is super clean and precise. Every single note in the guitars, bass and percussion is delivered with pin point accuracy and the bass carries a lot of the records intensity forward. 

Where the album falters is in its lyrical presentation. I'm just gonna come out and say it: I think that early Tom Arraya is ass, so why the hell would anyone want to try and replicate him? I can give Slayer a little bit of credit here, since Tom balanced it out with a few slower passages as well as dueling guitar solos. Archspire have taken the word vomit from Reign in Blood and put it on steroids! Shawn's vocals just sound like gargled mush. In a genre where the intention of the vocals IS to sound like gargled mush, why waste your energy? If it was meant to be a novelty/comedy album then maybe, but this is meant to be taken dead seriously, and the vocals are very technical and flowery. It seems like a poorly thought out idea to me.

Best Songs: Red Goliath, Carrion Ladder, Limb of Leviticus

For Fans Of: Cattle Decapitation, Shadow of Intent, Rings of Saturn

Moody, atmospheric shoegaze that should satisfy on those grunge, hazy filled days during the summer months. It's well performed, has a strong foundation and low end, which really emphasizes the style on display. Vocals have a carefree presentation that is reminiscent of Hum and their 2020 revival album Inlet. Besides that though, True Blue is lacking heavily in substance; a common issue that persists throughout the shoegaze genre of music, but this one is extra dazed. This sounds like Deftones on autopilot. However Deftones have proven that they can still make quality music when they are on autopilot into the 2020s so to be a step below that has to be concerning.

Best Songs: Levitate, Summer Skin, True Blue

For Fans Of: Deftones, Teenage Wrist, Astronoid

As you can see from the rating, The Search is not without its challenges for me.  Notwithstanding that this album was recorded nearly forty-years ago and that I suspect that they did not have the most advanced studio to work with, this took me back to the wrong side of the old school, blunting some of the sharper nostalgia that can normally carry a portion of such albums.  I mean, I have no experience of Necrosis before this month and so I had no familiarity to work from that may have been triggered somewhere in my aging brain.  Hence, the performance, although adept enough, is not captured as well as it could be.

In the main though, I just can't get past the vocals.  They are just too weak to the point of being whiny; unable to stack up against the rest of the instrumentation, especially the guitar work which is a good few notches above the vocal performance.  Increasingly, as I listened through the record, I found it hard to penetrate the skin of the record and pick out any individual moments to reflect upon.  The album as a result just became this mass of thrash music, without any clear delineation between tracks.  In short, it soon became a bit of a slog.

In the end I found myself listening to the album to almost try and outrun the vocals, just so I could hopefully get long enough away from them to enjoy the music itself.  Alas, I did not have the legs to last the course of that little mindgame and so The Search remains a discovery that I am unlikely to revisit.

Well colour me surprised that I ended up with two technical death metal albums in the same week, but life can be funny that way sometimes.

Growth are a fresh new Australian band in the tech-death variety and, according to the early reviews of Under the Under, I got the impression that it was going to be in the style of early Ulcerate such as Everything is Fire. Now if you know me, that should come as a huge boost, since Ulcerate were the band that singlehandedly broke my shell when it came to technical/dissonant death metal. So I threw my headphones on, hopped onto Bandcamp, pressed play and what I was hit with was a fruitful display of technical/progressive metal, but sounding like Ulcerate? I don't know about that one.

When I think of that band, it comes with the expectation that the word "dissonant" can be taken very lightly. The songs are extremely melodic, make use of both its loud and soft spaces, and always backed by an atmospheric foundation. By comparison, Under the Under is much closer to the hardcore side of the genre that became popularized by bands like Cattle Decapitation and, more recently, Replicant. As a result, this album is lacking a fair bit in that discomfort that should be expected when the phrase "dissonant death metal" is used. As such, many of my returning criticisms of metalcore in general have made a return here: a lot of decent ideas that are kneecapped by the simple fact that, "hey we need a slow breakdown passage here!" and the use of clean singing as a point of melody feels forced.

But it isn't all bad for the Australian combo. Growth have some progressive chops that have been taken from the playbook of An Abstract Illusion and even some clean guitar intros/interludes that sound inspired by the same sections on Ulcerate's last album. Compositions have plenty of variety between them as they power through the gauntlet of emotions. The production is all done in house and executed remarkably well. so as to sound indebted to their inspirators, but not a full blown copycat.

I quite enjoyed Under the Under but I would be hard-pressed to call it great. It has plenty of great moments, but many of them feel muted by the metalcore influence and it leaves the album feeling hollow at times. Now is it disingenuous of me to critique this record as trying to be like Ulcerate when they are clearly NOT trying to play like Ulcerate? Absolutely! So if you're looking for some modestly accessible technical death metal, this record should aim to please. But those who are more familiar with the genre might be left underwhelmed.

Best Songs: Remember Me as Fire, Under the Under, Pain Is Never Far Away

For Fans Of: Ulcerate(?), Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge

Best Songs: Oath Ov Prometheus, Penumbrian Lament, Death Is Forever

For Fans Of: Sólstafir, Dreadnought, Heretoir