Illogicist "Subjected" CD
[Crash]
I've been following this Italian band since their demo days, so I was really excited to finally check out their debut full-length. Their style is technical death metal with sneering midrange vocal screams and a lot of spacious note based riffing reminiscent of Death on some level (and some of the weirder combinations do still have an Atheist-esque bent), but a bit more staccato in delivery at times. The tempos are pretty fast, not too fast, but definitely keeping a certain thrashy energy level in place. I'm a huge, huge fan of the excellent basslines that totally keep up with the guitars, if they would've mixed the bass a little more prominently it could sound incredible. There are lots of riffs that sort of crawl up and down the neck in ascending and descending note patterns, but the fluid solos are probably one of my favorite aspects of what they're doing, as there's a lot of trading off and whatnot that adds a lot of interest to the extended instrumental passages. The title track offers nice guitar/bass interaction and somehow the riffing gets a little more memorable, but "The Soul Feeder", from the "Dissonant Perspectives" demo, is still a major standout here - a longer track at seven minutes, but chock full of killer solos and excellent melodic rhythms that add so much force in support of the leads. In fact, all three tracks from said demo actually appear here in re-recorded form. If I had to cite one complaint here it would simply be that the tracks are all fairly similar to one another, and I definitely miss the jazz fusion influences that were prevalent on the band's "Polymorphism of Death" demo, so a little more variety to differentiate the songs would be advisable. The recording is nice and crisp, I have no major problems with it. As mentioned I think the bass could be placed even louder in the mix to really add some punch and color, but the drums sound pretty damn good, the vocals are alright, etc. I like the guitar tone because it gets a good churning sort of texture to the picking patterns, though at times it does have a little bit of a bite to it. The leads sound sweet, though. I like the production overall. The layout's pretty cool, a little jumbled at times, but basically consistent. I really like the style of the band logo a lot, the cover art has a cool aesthetic to it, and the font is consistent throughout. The lyrics are sort of abstract, so it's hard to make out what's going on, but there are definitely some lines that just have that "metal band" style happening: "Dissonant ways, for a dissonant life it doesn't persist, Neurons, inebriated by the empirical flames of perception, What can be seen from the abyss of evil, Exciting every cell of my sick brain..." All in all a strong debut for these guys. They're definitely still a contender to watch in the future, and I think if they continue in this direction their technicality and songwriting abilities will increase with time and practice, so I'll be psyched to hear their next record. (7/10)
Running time - 38:51, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: Every Straight Lie, Subjected, The Soul Feeder]
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