Reviews list for Protosequence - Bestiary (2024)

Technical Deathcore eh? Well that's a genre that I don't see very often. Although a lot of deathcore bands use very technical/brutal death metal trends during their composition cycle as interludes between breakdowns, so this combination is not that uncommon.

Bestiary by Protosequence is an album trying to be about three artists at once. The first is (perhaps the most obvious one) Between the Buried and Me. The rapid style changes on individual songs are reminiscent of early BTBAM (Between the Buried and Me) albums such as The Silent Circus and Alaska. The issue here is that Protosequence are not super committed to the riffs as much of it falls into sounding very similar very quickly. The short passages of reprieve that the album gives you during the intro of "The Caveat" feel more like obligatory rests, which I do appreciate, but provide no value to the remaining material throughout the rest of the song.

The second and third acts Bestiary are replicating are Job For a Cowboy and Imperial Triumphant. Let's start with Imperial Triumphant, because this is in the production. Something about the instrumental timbre of this record just screams Alphaville just without the avant-garde instrumentation and it generally serves the album well when it comes to making the heavy sections sound heavy. The Job for a Cowboy comparison is more in the songwriting itself. These tunes are not as complicated as BTBAM, but their structure is quite similar to an early JFAC (Job for a Cowboy) release; specifically the "Entombment of a Machine" one. The vocals are furious in their delivery and show off a wide range of vocal capability, including pig squeals and gutturals, and the instrumentals can go from relentless death metal riffage to stank face breakdowns without warning. This is not really a style that I relate to very much at all since my attention span continues to get smaller every passing day, and the implication of "riff salad" leaves it half baked and missing that one connecting branch to lock it all together.

Two of these three comparisons look kind of familiar don't you think? BTBAM and JFAC both used to play a very technical, unfiltered kind of death metal, but both have moved on to greener pastures. Bestiary sounds like a record that wants to be placed firmly in the year 2005. That was twenty years ago. Come up with your own ideas.

Best Songs: Sam, The Caveat, Twelve Ropes