Existential Animals‘ djenty instrumental technical death metal EP Surrealith, which revolves around geological themes akin to The Ocean Collective’s Precambrian album, is a strong debut release, it will make you ask for more!

First of all, the strong impressions that album gave me are the technical capabilities of the musicians and the despairing atmosphere coming out of their music. Crafted around geological themes, it is supposed to represent millennia of rock moving, of flowing magma and unmoving bedrock, as well as the passage of time from an inorganic perspective. The instruments uncannily succeed in capturing those, maybe it’s the grain in the distortion, the scales used or the time signatures overlapping, but they really made something here. The album is technically atmospheric and as dissonant as we would want it to be. The guys are masters of their respective instruments and the playing is just flawless.

The last song on Surrealith is a vocal version of one of their demo songs. As the only sung song on the EP, it makes us see what Existential Animals could be with a full-time singer. And… maybe it’s just the singer, who I don’t particularly like, but I prefer their instrumental qualities over this. They seem to be able to capture the essence of the theme they’re trying to conveying quite well, and I wonder if it’s a fortunate success or a real earned one. And for that, only time will tell, and we are waiting for their next work eagerly!

For now, I recommend you give a spin to Surrealith, which is available for pay-what-you-want on their bandcamp page!