Review by Sandre the Giant
Entering their twelve year as a unit but only just dropping their third full length, Oklahoma’s Dischordia know to take their time to really give their work time to evolve and grow from each initial idea seed. ‘Triptych’ is album number three and it is out at the end of April through Transcending Obscurity.
The band play pummelling technical death metal in the style of Atheist, latter period Death and even a little Pestilence thrown in too. Their work is never absolutely razor sharp and clean, instead deciding to remain in the shadows, maddening time signature changes and technical wizardry suffocating under a miasmic atmosphere. It feels very early 90s, before everything got too surgical. You’ve got fascinating detours as well, like the eerie interlude to ‘Bodies of Ash’ which feels like some folk band in the 60s decided to get dark and evil with their panpipe, or the delicate acoustics in ‘Spirits of Dirt’. There’s a lot of discordant riffing in play too, like the Gorguts-esque churn of the uncomfortable ‘The Wheel’ while the mammoth ‘The Carriage’ is a wildly convoluted, monstrous entity of chaotic death metal violence and beauty.
Everything starts to get denser, weirder and more complex throughout the stunning ‘Panopticon’, and there’s clear parallels with the more modern dissonant tech death like Ulcerate as well as ‘Purifying Flame’ assaults the senses with a barrage of riffs before a sudden break takes us into an improvisational, almost jazzy interlude before that pounding returns. I also should mention the production job here is excellent, ensuring that the murky atmopshere I referenced earlier is an enhancer, not a barrier to the music. You can still appreciate every nuance on repeated listens, and they begin to rise from this omnipresent oppressive atmosphere of their own accord, naturally. When the album comes to a close with massive jarring dissonance and what seems like a choir of the damned in the background, it is truly apparent how far beyond everyone else Dischordia are moving.
‘Triptych’ is an album that I will be returning to again and again this year. It is challenging, brutally heavy at times and also gives you all the technical death metal riffs you can handle, without that saccharine, shiny clean sound to the instruments. No, this is tech death the way it was played in the old days, and yet even more impressive with modern sensibilities presenting a united front. Dischordia have written one of 2022’s most challenging records, and also one of the finest!
https://www.facebook.com/dischordiaband
https://dischordia.bandcamp.com/
https://transcendingobscurity.bandcamp.com/
The Killchain 