Review by Sandre the Giant
In what feels like almost a sister release to Transcending Obscurity’s Dead and Dripping record that we reviewed very recently here on the site, here come Germany’s Orphalis to show whatever the American side of the label’s death metal roster can do, the European side can do with just as much power. ‘As the Ashes Settle’ is due out July 25th.
The title track immediately explodes into a maelstorm of brutality and technicality and we’re off to the races. You can feel the threads of tech death giants spinning inside the Orphalis hurricane; Aborted and Psycroptic mangling each other while Anata watches in the background. What Orphalis do have in spades is virtuoso guitar leads skittering across the massive slabs of raging brutality. While Dead and Dripping starting to head down into yawning dissonant chasms however, Orphalis tend to stick more to the more straightforward but inject that with so much life. The spacious sections of ‘The Wolves Draw Near’, the skull caving slow parts of ‘Labyrinth Configuration’ and the ‘how many notes can we hit in one song’ mentality of the sublimely chaotic ‘Staring into Ruin’; everything is tech death pushed to the absolute maximum. The frenzy maintains all the way to the end of manic closer ‘Crowned in Hatred’, a remarkable feat of endurance that breathes only briefly in trancey interlude ‘Moon Supremacy’.
A crisp and punishing record, ‘As the Ashes Settle’ is full of every little thing you could hope for in a modern tech death record. An amazing proficiency in the musicianship department meets genuinely good songwriting and some really cool little detours from wall to wall speed. I find a lot of tech death hard to stay focused on, as after a while it all starts to bleed into itself. Orphalis doesn’t do this, and they’ve obviously found the secret sauce to help their work shine out in a sea of mediocre, samey bands. ‘As the Ashes Settle’ will melt your face like Raiders.
https://www.facebook.com/Orphalisband
https://transcendingobscurity.bandcamp.com/
The Killchain 