Unreal Overflows – Latent

The Italian progressive technical death metal crew known as Unreal Overflows soon will release their third full-length, Latent. Often compared to Death, Cynic, Atheist, and other early tech-death entities, Unreal Overflows embed some jazz music theory knowledge into a melodic, technical, and progressive form of death metal that totally warrants the aforementioned comparisons. More up to date, they sound a lot like Contrarian, who recently released a very good retro-tech-death album with To Perceive Is to Suffer. Latent is definitely in that vein, too, somewhat paying homage to the pioneers of the genre while bringing something new to … Read more

Moebius – Hybris

The Italian progressive metal quintet Moebius are preparing for the release of their debut album, Hybris, on 20 October. To do so, they’ve sent me an early copy of it, and I liked it enough to write about it! Yes, Hybris is an almost hourlong concept album on metals and minerals, it seems. It starts off interestingly with the track numbered “00” – “Inflection II” –, which is a didgeridoo and percussions jam, but the rock starts with “Obsidian”. Between groove metal and progressive death metal, the rest of Hybris impresses. The band’s music puts a lot of emphasis … Read more

Naeramarth – The Innumerable Stars

Naeramarth is a progressive metal band from Salk Lake City, and their debut album, The Innumerable Stars is coming out on 20 October. Stating influences as varied as Ihsahn, Leprous, Enslaved, and Opeth, Naeramarth cover an impressive range of metal genres, from black metal to doom metal, with a lot of straight-up progressive metal and prog death in-between. “Asterisms” is a pretty much perfect example of this, it covers well progressive black metal, with a very Opethian acoustic guitars corridor in the middle. Thanks to its 8:50 runtime, each part has the time to breathe, but its only about half … Read more

Sutrah – Dunes

We covered Montréal-based progressive technical death metal band Sutrah, back when they released their demo, and it seems that our crystal ball was no liar: they are releasing their debut full-length, Dunes (no, they didn’t liked my name suggestion), on 22 September, with pomp and circumstance! Fortunately, only positive changes were brought to the Sutrah formulah. First, obviously, it’s produced with a much higher quality. It feels like a proper product and the result of professional work, and it lets us enjoy the fifty-five minutes of puzzling death metal to the fullest. Secondly, their use of Oriental music … Read more

Nyn – Entropy: Of Chaos and Salt

Nyn is a technical death metal project with a now solid history. Entropy: Of Chaos and Salt is the project’s third release and sophomore full-length album. This time around, Noyan Tokgözoğlu sought the talents of Tom Geldschläger, also known as Fountainhead, and Jimmy Pitts, of the Pitts Minnemann Project fame (among others). While I was no fan of Nyn’s first two releases, this one is different. Through the years, musicianship improved greatly, and so did composition and production skills. First of all, the bass and guitar parts on Entropy are some of the wildest available in the tech-death world. So … Read more