ARTIFICIAL BRAIN
Labyrinth Constellation (2014)
The intergalactic apocalypse is upon us and it is being masterminded by an Artificial Brain. If you like science fiction and unorthodox death metal half as much as I do you're in for one hell of a journey with this record. In recent years death metal has been working to regain my trust in all things technical. The list of hyper technical, overly produced, boring and all too sterile tech death had been growing at such an alarming rate up until recently that I sometimes wondered if I should just write off anything with a 'technical' tag attached to it. And then Ulcerate came along and re-opened my mind to the sub-genre's potential. Since then there have been a slew of highly creative death metal bands who have found themselves able to craft expansive and thematic works of technical mayhem without giving themselves over to masturbatory showoff riffs or losing the human elements of their musicianship. New York's Artificial Brain work to further this cause with their debut full length Labyrinth Constellation. An absolute monster of a sci-fi inspired record that compounds my love of all things violently alien.
This record starts off with a roar that made me prepare to get aurally pummeled for the entire listen, but I soon realized I was in for a journey with much more subtlety than I initially thought. Not to say this record doesn't obliterate everything in it's path, because it does.....but upon finishing its various waves of destruction it pauses for brief, less oppressive musical interludes to catch a breath and let the listener survey the carnage.
The musical versatility on this record is staggering, everything from atonal Ulcerate inspired riffage to atmospheric black metal passages and even short synth and perfectly understated orchestral arrangements find their way into this one, all to incredible levels of success. The members of this band are obviously high level students of extreme music and this is their universe shaking doctorate thesis.
Also, one can never overstate the importance of cover art, and this one is a doozy, as you can see above. Paolo Girardi adds another masterpiece to his already stellar resume, further re-enforcing his position on the metal art Mt. Rushmore.
Fans of Demilich, Gorguts, Timeghoul, Ulcerate and Nocturnus need, and I emphasize need, to listen to this record. It's early in the year, but I can safely say, this album is gonna end up somewhere high on 2014's best album list. Now forgive me, I've gotta go leave to pack my interstellar bug-out bag, cuz we aren't long for this planet.
9/10 ruptured eardrums
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