My Blood, a Swirling Vortex of Space

Stargazer (Australia)

A Great Work of Ages

August, 2010

Like a crustacean from prehistoric times slowly being weathered away, slowly formed and carved out through time, and through the ages, refined with the delicate touch of mystical healing men and various divinatory mediums between the cosmos and the earth and imbued with the power of storytellers and mythmakers of old, whose tales and truths have come to identify cultures and identities of mankind all over the world. This is fractal thrash from Australia, sharing members with the mind fucking Impetuous Ritual and Portal. There's a distinct scope of grandness contained and refracted into digestible slices of jazzy deathy entropy. See, for example, the multidimensional fractal bloom of "Chase for the Serpentsong". The intent seems prehistoric, and reptillian in execution, as riffs slither and twist to form with a primal sheen of when today's crude were actually multi-ton pre-aviary lizard behemoths. Technical and very jazzy (especially with drums and bass), but still able to dish out some hard driven thrash mania, as exemplified in "Pypes of Psychosomatis". One of the best releases of 2010 for sure. Take a listen below.

Downward Spiral Into Madness

Anata (Sweden)

The Conductor's Departure

June 12, 2006

I realized I haven't posted a whole lot of death metal yet, and it's certainly a genre I'm a huge fan of, but technical death metal in particular is very finicky (I generally prefer the cavernous hell swamps drawn from the schools of Incantation and Immolation). One of the easiest genres to pump out material, but one of the hardest genres to make an original statement. Anata disbanded for quite some time, but recently got back together and will be releasing a new album this year. This is all at once, brutally heavy, possessing the perfect production for this style (clean enough to capture every note played as tight as a duck's arse, but not overdone to showcase that real humans are playing), yet with just enough of a touch of emotional attachment especially in the lyrics--which are very uncharacteristic for the genre--but also in the carefully constructed melodic depth that is initially hard to detect but surfaces the more you listen. This is what gives it such replayability as opposed to the dime-a-dozen pubescent tech death circle jerks that crowd up all the malls and mainstream magazines. Take a listen or 10 after clicking 'read more'. It's better to be grieved than fooled.