Review: Replicant – Infinite Mortality

Review by Sandre the Giant

The new record from New Jersey’s Replicant, ‘Infinite Mortality’, is out now through Transcending Obscurity, and looks to build on their excellent 2021 debut ‘Malignant Reality’, which laid the groundwork through oddly catchy and weird technical, dissonant death metal. This has had a lot of hype around the Twitter space (I will never call it ‘X’), and since it is a TO release I already had high expectations too.

Opener ‘Acid Mirror’ is a spiralling tech death blasterpiece, weird time signatures and howling dissonant guitar lines spin off in random directions . ‘Shrine to the Incomprehensible’ is full of uncomfortable electronic effects swirling around accomplished technical riffs and brutal vocals. The drumming on this record is amazing, moving with almost jazz-like complexity underneath those wrenching guitar tones and grinding, twanging bass tones. ‘Orgasm of Bereavement’ is not only one of 2024’s best song titles, it is also laden with jagged riffing and pounding groove as well, inducing much headbanging. ‘Reciprocal Abandonment’ sounds like atonal Suffocation breakdowns run through some kind of interdimensional filter, crushing almost-slam with detours into spacey effects. Replicant are so hard to pin down in one place, at times giving the surgical precision of a Decapitated or an Origin and others the maddening wildness of Ulcerate or early Morbid Angel. The whole record ripples with a sinewy strength and straining chaotic energy. It feels like it wants to explode into utter mind bending chaos, but it’s being gripped tightly by the band, a controlled carnage of brutality and invention

Replicant could be the modern heirs to Gorguts, such is their sleek and confident grasp of those dissonant and progressive death metal principles. Where a lot of bands who aim for Gorguts fail is in the songwriting quality; it isn’t enough to just be weird and technical, you need to make the songs really memorable too. ‘Infinite Mortality’ is a record full of memorable songs that also happen to pick and pluck at the frayed strings of your sanity at the same time. If you can wreck necks and psyches in the same record, you’ve got a winner in my book, and ‘Infinite Mortality’ does just that. Fucking hell TO, you’ve found another one!

https://www.facebook.com/replicantnj/

https://replicantnj.bandcamp.com/

https://replicantband.bandcamp.com/album/infinite-mortality

2024 Anniversary Series 046: Arsis – A Celebration of Guilt

Scribed by Sandre the Giant

We’ve talked a lot this year so far about 2004 being a year of reaffirmation and rebirth of classic genres. Much of it has been around albums by classic artists, reinvigorating the black and death metal scenes after the grunge and nu-metal apocalypses. But we should really take time to celebrate the debuts around this time that led the new generation of extremity, and a classic example is the debut from technical melodic death metallers Arsis, ‘A Celebration of Guilt’, which is now 20 years old.

I first came upon Arsis on their 2008 banger ‘We Are the Nightmare’, and was blown away by the technical wizardry on display but also how incredibly catchy it was. I later learned that this had been in place from the start, and ‘A Celebration of Guilt’ was a start of something really special. It has everything modern death metal needed to thrive; hooks, killer riffs that wormed their way into your brain, a bit of chaotic brutality and best of all, a pure love and enthusiasm for the genre. How this was made by only two people I’ve never understood; this wasn’t the time of duo bands that could kick this much arse. You see much more of that nowadays but 20 years ago? Minimal. The only other band that were really pulling off stuff like this in that era were The Black Dahlia Murder, and I rather believe they were given much of the credit for the rebirth of a sound that Arsis contributed a lot to as well. You could pull any track from this record and you’d find any number of future hallmarks of where death metal would go in the following years, but I have always been partial to the spiralling ‘Worship Depraved’, a track that gave me prime In Flames shudders the first time I heard it. Arsis always had a bit of ‘The Jester Race’ about them, so it all kinda makes sense.

We have yet to hear from Arsis since 2018’s ‘Visitant’, and hopefully we will again because they played such a vital role as part of that new breed in the early 2000s to help get death metal back into the consciousness of metal fans. Three records in three years maintained that high watermark set by their debut, and despite the quality of their other stuff, ‘A Celebration of Guilt’ seems to have always been a favourite. For me, I’m glad that Arsis were able to succeed as part of that new wave of American death metal, and they definitely deserve to be discussed more often when it comes to influences on where the genre has gone in the past 20 years.

https://www.facebook.com/arsis

Review: Hideous Divinity – Unextinct

Review by Sandre the Giant

The latest record from Italian tech death metallers Hideous Divinity is out now through Century Media, and ‘Unextinct’ looks to help them take their place on the upper level of the new breed of tech death maestros across European death metal. It explores cosmic horror and psychological fear, and provides a suitably apocalyptic soundtrack for these deep and existential thoughts.

The worry I have for Hideous Divinity is that they’ll spend too much time being compared to their fellow countrymen Hour of Penance or Fleshgod Apocalypse to be given fair coverage. Their sound is similar in parts, but to be honest they share a lot more DNA with someone like Behemoth or Nile than those two. Songs have multiple layers, a maelstrom of fearsome technical death metal that would make Suffocation proud, but a number of almost orchestral flourishes that really flesh out their sound. This orchestra though has clearly spent some time in the darkest crevices of our universe, and so some of this grandiose backdrop is a little discordant. On top of that discordance is an absolute masterclass in technical death metal, ferocious and frenzied but possessed of a real raw power. Tracks like ‘Against the Sovereignty of Mankind’ and ‘Quasi-Sentient’ are straining to be unleashed, spiralling cacophonies of death metal come pouring from the speakers, as the mighty roar of vocalist Enrico Di Lorenzo challenges your perceptions and psyche. Those synth additions in places, just to cause a little extra cosmic atmosphere, are a nice touch too, for example in ‘Hair, Dirt, Mud’, giving you a little taste of the extra layers.

‘Unextinct’ is a pretty long record, with a number of six plus minute tracks but at no point does this just become rote or by the numbers. Hideous Divinity are consistently engaging and interesting throughout, not mentioning of course their absolutely devastating brutality. This is a really fucking heavy record; every element combining at its most crushing to create a record that impresses, punishes and most importantly, demands repeated listens. They may share their homeland with some essential tech death bands, but Hideous Divinity do more than enough here to be revered on their own merits.

https://www.facebook.com/hideousdivinity

https://www.centurymedia.com/

https://centurymedia.bandcamp.com/album/unextinct-24-bit-hd-audio

2024 Anniversary Series 035: Necrophagist – Epitaph

Scribed by Sandre the Giant

The final record from Germany’s Necrophagist was, whether accidentally or not, fittingly titled ‘Epitaph’ as so it has remained for over 2 decades at this point. A record whose stature has grown slowly over the years to allow it to be regarded as a true classic of the genre, a tentpole release in a time of resurgence and rebirth, but also a record that spent much of its first decade of existence cast in the ever deepening shadows of rumours about its non existent follow up. Therefore we at the Killchain are about to cast more light upon it, and wax lyrical about one of death metal’s most talked about records.

The follow up to ‘Epitaph’, which has and probably will never come, has almost become more important than ‘Epitaph’ itself. Necrophagist’s debut ‘Onset of Putrefaction’ was a fantastic if slightly underappreciated piece of brutal and technical death metal, and ‘Epitaph’ is where mainman Muhammed Suiçmez took the songwriting and composition to a whole new level. There’s a reason that twenty years on, people still discuss this record in hushed tones. Tracks like ‘Stabwound’, the baroque influenced ‘Only Ash Remains’ and the bass heavy assault of ‘Symbiotic in Theory’ not only still resonate years later with their quality, but you can feel their influences threading through much of progressive and technical death metal bands now. ‘Epitaph’ arrived during the rebirth of death metal in the early 2000s, and Necrophagist feel like the progenitors of Hour of Penance and Fleshgod Apocalypse, technical and brutal bands who still have a sense of the composition rather than just the ‘how many notes a second can you get’. Much of modern tech death is missing that subtlety, and I think they could all do with putting ‘Epitaph’ on and learning something.

‘Epitaph’ seems to have been the final work of Necrophagist forever, and whether by design or not seems to have been an utterly defining work for their existence. An album that even to this day should be respected and loved much more for its musical achievements than just its legacy as a stepping stone to a ‘greater’ sequel. We spent too much time cracking jokes about how long do we have to wait for another Necrophagist record, when we should’ve just been heaping praise upon this glorious achievement of sublime technical death metal, full of tracks that remain iconic even to this day. Our hubris in demanding ‘what’s next?’ leaves us open to missing what is right in front of us.

https://www.facebook.com/Necrophagist

Live Review: Cryptopsy/Atheist/Almost Dead/72 Legions (21/03/24)

This was about to be a big 48 hours in the world of the Killchain’s live music experience. 6 bands, 2 gigs, 5 of which I had never seen before. It has been somewhat of a target of mine to try and see as many bands I’ve never seen live before I miss the opportunity, and my first night was an absolute doozy. Some of death metal’s most important artists, one having never played in Scotland before ever? I’m in, trudging on a damp night to SLAY in Glasgow, full of the cough, ready to bang my fucking head.

But first, the supports. I had utterly missed the fact that 72 Legions were up first, just arriving at the venue when they were starting their set. I was aware of their first EP which I thought was OK, and hadn’t really checked out their newest release. Well, colour me idiotic because I was really unaware of how much game 72 Legions had. Their music is tight, brutal and utterly punishing live, and it really left me feeling daft that I hadn’t given them as much of a chance as I should have on record. That has been rectified since.

https://www.facebook.com/72Legions

Californian bruisers Almost Dead were up next, and while their Encyclopedia Metallum entry might list them as ‘Thrash/Groove’, their live performance gave me a lot more Black Dahlia Murder meets Agnostic Front. They had plenty of massive dumb breakdowns that lit up the pit, huge hardcore vibes racing through frontman Tony Rolandelli’s delivery, and he was so enthused he fell off the stage and broke his mic at one point. He also performed one song from in the pit, which made Almost Dead a big fan favourite on the night. If you like ‘proper’ deathcore like The Acacia Strain, then Almost Dead do some hard shit that you’ll probably love. Their live shows are brilliant.

https://www.facebook.com/BayAreaHardcoreMetal

A dimly lit stage was the only flaw in an incredible performance next from iconic progressive death metallers Atheist, whose set was mostly drawn from their utterly perfect 1991 record ‘Unquestionable Presence’ but also contained plenty of other such classics too. We got a staggering version of ‘Piece of Time’, a tribute to the late great Roger Patterson’s incredible basswork, as well as all timers like ‘Enthralled in Essence’ and so much more. “Do you want it to get weird?” frontman Kelly Schaefer asked, and we all of course agreed. It is why we love Atheist, a sound like no other and fully happy to descend into funky, jazzy samba when required, and back to proggy old school death. This was going to be a hard act to follow.

https://www.facebook.com/AtheistBand

So Cryptopsy did what only Cryptopsy could do to compete with it; they fucking set themselves on destruction mode and absolutely wrecked the place with their uber technical and uber brutal sound. Pulling classics from all across their career, including from ‘None So Vile’, their debut demo from 1993 and plenty from their 30th-anniversary-celebrating-debut ‘Blasphemy Made Flesh’ (expect an anniversary piece on that this year). Flo Mounier was superlative on drums, and the rest of the band were just as good. I fell off the Cryptopsy bandwagon a bit back when they released ‘The Unspoken King’, but tonight they proved that their incredible discography is a match for anyone in the genre. An utterly devastating finale to a night rife with death metal magic. What a gig!

https://www.facebook.com/cryptopsyofficial

2024 Anniversary Series 022: Anata – Under a Stone With No Inscription

Scribed by Sandre the Giant

The last recordings of bands you really like is always a sad occasion, and it has been for me regarding Sweden tech death maestros Anata, whose last record ‘The Conductor’s Departure’ in 2006 was my first experience with them, and they’ve not released anything since! They don’t seem to have broken up either, so I’m not sure what the story is either. It was a real first introduction to technical death metal for me in my nascent years discovering extreme music subgenres, and I’ve become a champion of their discography. Well, on that, this February marks the 20th anniversary of their penultimate record, ‘Under a Stone With No Inscription’, a record which I think is my favourite of all of theirs.

What hooked me on Anata was how their brand of technical death metal was a perfect mix of the sleek, uber technical modern stuff as well as old school Atheist/Suffocation technicality. Nothing was too easy, but there was loads of memorable songs in there too. ‘Entropy Within’ is a great example, where you’ve got spiralling leads and punishing rhythym guitar, octopian drums and yet you’ll immediately recognise it after two or three listens. We’re about to enter a phase of Cannibal Corpse doing something similar in the early to mid 2000s as well, and this subgenre was starting to flourish with excellent bands. What is also great about Anata is that they have no interest in cracking out the old HM2 pedal and becoming stereotypes. There is almost no trace of their national death metal identity here, and it is nice to see a death metal band that doesn’t lean into that too much. ‘Built of Sand’ and ‘Leaving the Spirit Behind’ are two more great examples of how Anata managed to dual wield technicality and brutality in equally effective measure, and we would see that throughout their discography, from their more groove laden ‘The Infernal Depths of Hatred’ debut up until their now lost classic final record. There’s always moments of real magic as well though, like that soulful interlude part in ‘The Drowning’, or the progressive noodlings of closer ‘Any Kind of Magic or Miracle’ before it swoops back in raining hellfire from above. Fuck this is a great record!

There’s so many lessons that modern tech death could take from a band like Anata with regards of pacing and balance. ‘Under a Stone With No Inscription’ is a record that oozes breathtaking musicianship but refuses to lose that Suffocation density, that swooning heaviness that underpins everything they do. An unheralded masterpiece from the era of underappreciated death metal records, a genre on the comeback in 2004, and maybe just maybe we’ll get some more from these guys. And if we don’t well, we’ve got an excellent discography to enjoy anyway!

https://www.facebook.com/AnataDeathMetal/

2024 Anniversary Series 008: Decapitated – The Negation

Scribed by Sandre the Giant

It is hard to put forward in 2024 just how important Polish death metal titans Decapitated weree when they burst onto the scene with their iconic 2000 debut, ‘Winds of Creation’. Death metal had been in a rut for a number of years; with the rise then fall of black metal and the mainstream acceptance of nu-metal, the genre had struggled to regain its superiority despite a number of great hidden gems in those years. When the disgustingly young band (teenagers) dropped an instant classic, the world took notice. Maybe a new generation were coming to save us. Well, in 2004 we saw the release of the band’s third full length, ‘The Negation’, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this month.

‘The Negation’ might be the most overlooked of the band’s pre-accident era, with ‘Winds of Creation’ and ‘Nihility’ often taking a lot of plaudits and my own personal favourite Decapitated album being the follow up to this, ‘Organic Hallucinosis’. But as an example of Decapitated’s work, ‘The Negation’ is a record that bears all their hallmarks and deserves much more attention. You’ve got technical death masterpieces like ‘Sensual Sickness’, or the writhing ‘Long Desired Dementia’, and you cannot escape the youthful exuberance in the jagged pummelling of ‘Lying and Weak’. Decapitated’s sound has moved slowly away from this wildly technical flavour into a little more death groove in later years, but their first four albums were tour de forces of technical wizardry. They could dance from chugging brutality into tectonic scales and stop start riffs with barely a moment’s notice, while the charismatic growls of Covan have always been a highlight for me. The truest test of Decapitated’s talent was to craft genuinely memorable songs out of their tech death, real earworms without being traditionally catchy, my favourite example of this on ‘The Negation’ is the swaggering title track with its insatiable groove.

Much has been made of the tragic accident in 2007 that robbed us of drumming powerhouse Vitek, and left then vocalist Covan in a coma and paralysis, and where the band could have gone without such a cruel twist of fate. I don’t like to dwell on such thoughts as we have four masterful records that that trio (including sole remaining member Vogg) created that will live forever. ‘The Negation’ is the quieter sibling of the four; perhaps less popular or less beloved but an unbelievably potent and powerful technical death metal record that forms a core part of Decapitated’s influence across today’s death metal scene. Everywhere you look, you can find bands that draw their whole style from the kind of riffs found within this album and Decapitated’s others. Sure, it might not have a ‘Spheres of Madness’ or ‘Day 69’, but ‘The Negation’ is more than worth your time, and cannot be left out as part of this revolutionary band’s legacy.

https://www.facebook.com/decapitated

Review: Plague Rider – Intensities

The brutality that emerges from the North East of England is somewhat underappreciated outside of these hellish islands, but Newcastle/Durham’s Plague Rider have been crafting dizzying tech death metal records for over a decade at this point. Their self titled debut was a revelation, as was the uncomfortably brutal ‘Paroxzym’ EP, and now finally we have their sophomore full length effort ‘Intensities’, out in November through Transcending Obscurity.

The decade between their debut and now has been broken with the odd EP but it has clearly not been a fallow period for those involved with Plague Rider. Opener ‘Temporal Fixation’ begins to break you in slowly before descending into wild, dissonant tech death riffing and chaotic time signatures. A frenzy of screams, growls, maddening guitar work and an unholy disregard for ‘normalcy’ leaves you breathless and unable to stop listening. Three of the eight tracks here appeared on their 2018 EP ‘Rhizome’, where we were first exposed to what Plague Rider were considering with their death metal; a move away from the normal, the standard, into a brave new world. ‘Intensities’ is a step further, from the dark twisted maelstrom of ‘Toil’ and the sanity bending riffs of ‘Challenger’s Lecturn’ into the thunderous closer ‘Without Organs’, where elements of grindcore, death/doom and Ulcerate-esque atonality weave into each other in a tapestry of brutality.

An incredible challenging listen for those not prepared, Plague Rider have taken their death metal into new and unthinkable realms. I wasn’t prepared for what was about to be unleashed, and for a record to surprise and confound in 2023 is a rarity indeed. There’s an old Lovecraftian trope that inevitably you cannot know what the terror really is because those who see it instantly go insane. ‘Intensities’ may be the metal album equivalent of that.

https://www.facebook.com/PlagueRiderUK

https://plaguerider.bandcamp.com/album/rhizome

https://transcendingobscurity.bandcamp.com/

Anniversary Series 142: Rivers of Nihil – The Conscious Seed of Light

Scribed by Sandre the Giant

The early 2010s were big years for the advent of the new waves of modern technical death metal, you know the bands with the complex names, complex album titles and even more complex riffs? Leading that charge were new scene darlings Rivers of Nihil, who put their debut record ‘The Conscious Seed of Light’ out on Metal Blade of that year. Now, for the venerable Metal Blade Records, with their excellent pedigree of classic death metal releases, to want to release your debut, you’ve got to be producing something fairly special.

Rivers of Nihil were the first of that style of modern death metal I really got into; the powerful maelstrom of relentless technical riffs and ferocious vocals, delving slightly into deathcore at times then coming roaring back out. Mostly up until I heard ‘The Conscious Seed of Light’ I had stuck mainly to old school death metal or stuff that was a little less chaotic. But you know yourself, sometimes you just need a genre to hit you in the right spot to really finally open that door. I had had times in the past when technical death metal appealed, but I didn’t quite get over that hump completely until 2013, and this was a record that really helped me do that. The whole scene was testing me, poking me, tempting me for a while beforehand.

It is the kind of death metal that really tries to hit you with a full ‘wall of sound’ in places; the drums are insane at times, the roar of then vocalist Jake Dieffenbach is guttural yet audible lyrically, the guitar work is twisting and turning, chugging brutally before spiralling off in tearing solos. Bands like Beneath the Massacre, All Shall Perish, Annotations of an Autopsy, they had been here for me before but this was a record that helped it all click. The slow burn battering of ‘Soil & Seed’, the savage chaos of ‘Human Adaption’, the low end power of ‘Place of Serpents’, it all just came perfectly into focus for me on this record and it is why it has a special place in my record collection. That devastating intro to ‘Mechanical Trees’ is enough to sell me on modern tech death forever; punishing drums, an unearthly guitar bend that just takes you to a new dimension, then some masterful lead melodies over the dissonant backbone. They even pull out an almost melodic masterpiece at the end with ‘Airless’, giving us a taste of where this sound can go.

Couple this record with an absolutely stunning Dan Seagrave cover art and you’ve got me hooked easily. None of this gore flecked carnage or lurid neon monstrosities, old school fucking classic Seagrave art. ‘The Conscious Seed of Light’ was not the first record to do this, neither was it the most hyped or the even the best at it. But it was a brilliant record that unlocked that door for me, and probably countless others, and I’ve been a fan ever since.

https://www.facebook.com/riversofnihil

Anniversary Series 122: Ulcerate – Vermis

Scribed by Geary of War

Aucklanders Ulcerate had fairly been through the mill with band changes by the time 2013 had rolled around and it was time for new material. However that was no obstacle as they looked for a way to attack writing their next album, ‘Vermis’. ‘Vermis’ was the first album the band released through Relapse and there is no beating about the bush, people loved it, I love it, but if you are reading this you already guessed that.

If you can believe it, the band felt that ‘Destroyers of All’ was a little too fluid for their liking and they needed to try a new path. Drummer Jamie Saint Merat noted that dissonance for dissonace’s sake is extremely fatiguing. Which, for a band which is known for that style of metal, leaves a bold path ahead. Well I’ll be damned if they didn’t produce a record which shows they can be dissonant and all kinds of unsettling. Channelling all they have learned about technical death metal, adding in the darker side of post metal with a pinch of the black metal grimness to create an oppressive yet glorious 54 mins and 18 seconds of what the pit of hell must have as a soundtrack.

‘Odium’ is the tone setter. Do not get comfortable. It only gets darker from here. Title track Vermis showcases all the band can be, technical as the day is long but with the most bone grinding elements of the heaviest post metal out there, think Old Man Gloom coming for your soul and bone marrow. The stall was set and there is no escaping. Continuing the more death/post metal is ‘Clutching Revulsion’ which contains some mighty if brief riffs before fully attempting to melt your face off with blasting before we go again, drawn in, blasted and pulled in again. The ending of the track is brilliant, unsettling melody with all sorts of time signature changes (an album-deep theme to keep the listener guessing). Taking its time with a brooding opening is ‘Weight of Emptiness’; it is easy to say post metal here again but I get touches of funeral doom as well, slow and heavy with the shift to relentless at the drop of a hat. ‘Confronting Entropy’ well, no mistaking the death metal here. Oh my is it layered though. For every bit of brooding the previous track did, this track is ramping it up, teasing riffs before taking them away. Even writing this at 4.36 I turned my head and said “OOOO” and I’ve heard this album loads!! It’s a small blink-and-you-miss-it moment and it encapsulates the brilliance of this album.

‘Fall to Opprobrium’ is an instrumental pace break but in keeping with the theme of the album it is dark, foreboding. Leading us onto ‘The Imperious Weak’ where I encourage the listener to offer a round of applause to Saint Merat in particular, Jesus wept that man must be wildly fit. As brutal and nerve-shredding as previous efforts this flips from slow slamming to face off speed with a snap of the fingers. Penultimate track ‘Cessation’ returns to the slow but crashing beginning, bending and weaving the listeners mind along to the music. Then, well you have guessed by now, Ulcerate’s own brand of audio assault. A quiet melodic send off? You, my friend, are in the wrong place, ‘Await Rescission’ rumbles and roars its way along with the now familiar disjointed hellish and engaging guitar work of Michael Hoggard. I’ve mentioned the drums and guitar now but I must also mention the dual responsibilities of Paul Kelland who not only plays bass but is the man responsible for the hell’s wrath roar throughout the album. He has the ability to ensure his delivery is not monotonous and evokes all the dread and various other emotions desired with this kind of music.

How do you sum up an album like this?* It is genre straddling, death metal and post metal in delivery but most definitely black metal in attitude in places and tone. When you try and describe who they sound like; Gorguts are easy, there are parts of Deathspell Omega in there, Imperial Triumphant for me too, not with the jazz such, more the fearlessness to make the listener unsure of what the hell is happening. I will always love a band who push the boundaries of what they know they can do, who return to what an album makes you feel, not just an exercise in “oh look how good I am, look at all the wonderful things I can do” As mentioned by Saint Merat, dissonance for dissonance’s sake is fatiguing, as is technical for technical’s sake, but when you can be technical, engaging and evoke emotion, you have it nailed. With ‘Vermis’ Ulcerate put forth a glorious example of emotion evoking, technical wonder.

*Short answer, you don’t, you wax lyrical about it some more and say GO LISTEN!

https://www.facebook.com/Ulcerate