''Implosion'' a diamond in the rough
Ever since the turn of the millennium, death metal bands like Necrophagist, Atheretic, Spawn of Possession, The Faceless, Augury, Beneath the Massacre, Psycroptic, and lots of others have taken the idea of "technical death metal" and run with it...
...right into a brick wall.
I like the idea of blending the aggression and ugliness of death metal with the band actually knowing how to play their instruments; there is a reason why Death and Morbid Angel are considered death metal gods, after all. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line things went wrong. Songs became a string of meaningless, "quantity over quality" riffs that had very little to do with each other. Drummers stopped using creative rhythms in favour of blasting their kits as quickly as humanly possible. Computers allowed bands to polish their recordings cheaply and easily, and while the music sounded "better", it also sounded fake and contrived. Like other metal sub-genres, it became oversaturated with far too many bands doing essentially the same thing, sweeping all of the worthwhile groups playing technical death metal; Sinners Bleed, !T.O.O.H! (yeah, that's a band name...), Stargazer, to name a few; into relative obscurity.
To go back to my wall metaphor, Odious Mortem is the only technical death metal band able to break through the brick wall. On their second album, Cryptic Implosion, they abandon the brutal death metal of their debut in favour of much more interesting technical death metal. They do stick to most of the stereotypes of the genre, which at first threw me off, but they do it right. Even though the album is full of jarring rhythm changes and fretboard finger-dances, they are thrown at your ears aggressively and juxtaposed with slower paced, thunderous grooves so that the speed and chaos of Odious Mortem's musical assault never becomes self-indulgent or redundant.
I think credit for Cryptic Implosion's enjoyability goes to growler Anthony Trapani. While most vocalists in this style of death metal just try to throw a few words in whenever they can, Anthony sounds perfectly comfortable growling over the hurricane of Odious Mortem's music. He adds a simplicity, depth and intensity to the music that sets Odious Mortem above their peers, who too often become dull once the "wow they play real good" effect wears off. Not to downplay the rest of the band; KC Howard sounds like he's playing a perpetual drum solo for the whole album, and even then he's only just keeping up with the rest of the band's intricate and brutal riffing. The guitar solos? Let's just say that when jazzmetal guitar guru Ron Jarzombek (Watchtower, Spastic Ink) steps in for a guest solo on "Collapse of Recreation" it sounds about par with the solos on the rest of the album.
Odious Mortem may not bring any revolutionary ideas forward, but Cryptic Implosion is as intense, complex and addictive as any death metal I've heard. It's 35 minute length hardly feels like enough.
| Reviewer: Jeff Mcquiggan Added: May 4th 2007 |
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