The Asteroid Bullet Belt

Fretless bass goes "VREEEEOW". (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on March 20th 2024)  I really need to come to terms with the fact that I actually enjoy progressive metal. For how much I tend to deride it on some of my reviews (ironically enough those that are of a progressive nature), I always end up listening to a good handful of releases, specifically those that are combined with death metal. Though some of my complaints about it being a victim of its own excess still stand, there’s definitely a specific niche I am hopelessly in love with, that being “spacey prog death metal”. It’s a relationship that started with Voidceremony’s 2020 debut, Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel , and has persisted to this day. Needless to say, I was scouring forums and websites in search of albums with fretless bass and wonky song structures on the regular. Thankfully, the quartet returned in 2023 with the much simpler titled Threads of Unknowing , w...

What is life without some hardships to endure? (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on January 25th 2024.)  I know it’s been a hot minute since it happened, but to this day I still think about how musicians were affected by the pandemic. So many bands either went on hiatus or outright disbanded, and for a good while I thought Tomb Mold was among them. The Canadians were quite industrious up until 2019’s Planetary Clairvoyance , but the moment 2020 came around they went completely radio silent. Mercifully enough, they broke said silence with the Aperture of Body demo in 2022, and a year later we’re graced with their fourth full-length, The Enduring Spirit . Undoubtedly, the title is a declaration in and of itself, marking a bold new direction for the group, one that we had only caught glimpses of until now. Ever the musical chameleons, Tomb Mold have yet again changed their sound in what is probably the most extreme shift of their career so far. Barring Max Kl...

Journeying through the dark depths of space. (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on June 23rd 2022)  Life is truly full of surprises. Originally, I was planning to review Tomb Mold’s Planetary Clairvoyance (it’s still going to happen, promise), but out of nowhere they decided to drop this here demo. It’s been 3 years since the last time we heard from these guys, and with the pandemic happening I feared for the worst. Thankfully they’re still together, and Aperture of Body is proof they haven’t missed a step, even after such a long period of silence. Strange as it might seem, Tomb Mold is a band that has been subtly changing between releases, and things aren’t different here. From the riffy Finndeath of Manor of Infinite Forms to the caverndeath of Planetary Clairvoyance , they’ve gone through plenty of stylistic shifts while still maintaining their core. Aperture of Body sees a gradual shift towards the quasi-prog style that has been ever so popular these ...

An excessively long review title for comedic effect (It isn't funny). (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on June 23rd 2022)  Yes, yes, I know, another review for Blood Incantation’s Hidden History of the Human Race . I’m sure everyone’s absolutely thrilled to see me write a review about what is arguably the most popular extreme metal album of the last decade. In any case, I feel compelled to add my two cents to the conversation surrounding it, especially considering how the hype around it has long since died down and we can look at it with a more inquisitive perspective. I ought to kick things off with a disclaimer and admit that the attention the band has garnered with this release is fully deserved. They really did manage to make a very expansive and unique project that’s worth a listen by any metal fan, especially those into spacey death metal à la Timeghoul and The Chasm. That being said, the splash Hidden History… made outside of the underground than...

Dusk falls upon the windswept peaks. (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on February 13th 2022) It would seem that 2022 has started off with quite a few progressive death metal releases. First it was Voidceremony’s demo, and now we have Vile Rites’ debut EP, The Ageless . These (seemingly) young Californians are relatively fresh in terms of their presence within the metal scene, but the music presented here indicates otherwise. This is more reminiscent of something veteran musicians would put out rather than newcomers, making this release all the more interesting. Following a very brief (and redundant) intro, Vile Rites swing at the listener with the title track of this release, which contains everything we’ll be seeing throughout this release. Angular and occasionally discordant riffs, intense drumming, adventurous basslines, with tastefully melodic solos being the cherry on top. Though it is a very dense and technical release, it is by no means lacking in th...

The border between the material and the immaterial.  (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on January 24th 2022)  I’m gonna come clean here, I’m not a particularly big progressive [insert subgenre here] guy. I’ve found that by and large the tag means that the band bearing it either does insubstantial instrumental acrobatics or has songwriting so cluttered it feels incoherent, leading to songs that, while technically impressive, fail to elicit an emotional reaction from me. This is where Voidceremony comes in. Their debut, Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel is progressive not only in the sense of being super technical, but also in that it actually does something interesting with the death metal formula and creates something surprisingly unique, in turn becoming one of my favourite albums of 2020. Following that I’ve been keeping a keen eye on the band, so you can imagine my excitement when they announced the At the Periphery of Human Real...