Release-date: 31-10-2011
Label: Basick Records
Origin: France

Long have I been looking forward to this release (although at time of writing not yet officially released), it has surpassed even my best expectations and finds itself steady at the top of favourite releases this year.

Februus is yet another Djent album, but one that not much unlike TesseracT and Proghma-C focusses more on groove and atmosphere than sheer technical ingenuity. If you’re a fan of any of these bands, purchasing Februus should be a gut-reflex. Drawing another comparisation with TesseracT, we can’t exactly speak of songs with this release as the whole album is just one continuous experience just like the formerly mentioned’s EP Concealing Fate. From Awaken to Finale it takes you on a journey where you’ll chill, strain your neck headbanging and shiver, just like I did, seeing Uneven Structure perform an awesome set at Euroblast last weekend in Cologne, Germany amongst many of its peers.

Expect rather chugging djenty or spacey guitars or both, carried by rhythmically intense drums. An amazing vocal performance on both screams and cleans that will make the hair on your neck get up, are the cherry on the whippedcream covered cheesecake goodness that is Februus.

Pick this excellent piece of progressive, technical and atmospheric metal up the 31st of October 2011, and in the meantime stream it on Soundcloud below.

Halfway through the first track on myspazz I was awed and had no doubt I’d like the album, love at first sight might yet be real. A few days ago the album got released here all over Europe. Naturally I quickly got my (sweaty) hands on it and have listened to it every day since. Fragments Of Form And Function is a especially great album, and let me tell you why.

It’s not melodic thrash as I first thought it would be but melodic technical death metal, “oh more tech death…” I hear you say, and you’re right. The genre is getting to a point of oversaturation, and it’s hard to find an album that truly stands out. Fragments Of Form And Function doesn’t bring anything new to the table, it technically should go on the shelf with the hundreds of other technical death albums that have been flooding us, if it weren’t for the fact that Allegaeon is qualitatively superior to nearly anything that’s been released in the genre.

I’ll start with the vocals, who mostly remind me of Amon Amarth, a band that is to me quite different for Allegaeon but for the clear growls. That’s almost a contradiction, but to the point it’s not evident for death growls and grunting to be intelligible, most of the time you need to read the lyrics to make them out. Just like previously named viking metallers, you’ll be “kareokeing” (if that were a real verb) when you’ve heard the verses once. The God Particle and Accelerated Evolution realy stand out on this point.

As to be expected with a technical death metal band, the rest of the band consists of very skilled members. Although you’ll the band uses extended range guitars (I think that’s a Schecter C-7 on their videoblogs) you’ll hear no Djent or much ‘chugga chugga oooohmmmm’ (for lack of an onomatopoeia). No you’ll be bombarded with craploads of excellent riffs that flow fluently over and into each other with rarely time for a breather to the point that when the solos kick in, you will realize you weren’t yet listening to a solo. (If that makes any sense) yet it’s not overdooing it. The songs work out every time, without it turning into a “look at my awesomesauce tapping skills fest”. (well… maybe a little bit, but I like such a thing) check out Biomech – Vals no.666. I hardly ever touch the subjects of the drums since I am a guitar geek myself I tend to focus a lot more on the ax’s. There’s nothing much I can remark on them, the mixing could be tweaked a bit in my opinion. Otherwise it’s a full-throttle percussion assault including many short and longer blastbeats.

A nice touch is the acoustic, almost flamenco intermission marking the middle of the album, and the slightly more progressive closing track (it’s longer… ahem) Accelerated Evolution. One might claim Allegaeon arrived a little too late to the tech death scene,  or that the songs lack a little identity to picked up by the more mainstream metal crowd. But that doesn’t mean that if you, like me are a sucker for this sort of earshattering guitarwizardry… You shouldn’t pick this album up, you’ll be missing out.

I’ve never rated an album on this blog before, but that’s amongst other things changing now. More info on this will follow later

There’s a teaser video of the track A Cosmic Question? a little earlier on here be sure to check it out.

score: 9 out of 10

Yet the reason why I keep listening to this gem of an album is because it’s so diverse, or ‘eclectic’.  (Sic)monic themselves describe it as “heart crushing sound fused with melodic integrity that is pushing modern musical boundaries into an extreme new territory.” Offcourse bands will never sell themselves short in their descriptions, however my description “A progressive fusion of nu-metal with grind/death-core” isn’t too far off “an extreme new territory”. Expect a vast range of vocalstyles listening to this album, including rap-core, growls, screamo, pigsqueels, melodic verses and something I never heard before but could describe as “rap- or scat-growling” (scat???).

The instrumental work isn’t much less diverse. At one point a song is sounds as a radio-friendly nu-metal track to then explode into a brutal assault on the eardrums you’ll probably never hear on radio (except on some metal-specific internet-radios). But this isn’t a pattern that you will find in every song on Somnambulist, nearly every song has it’s own unique atmosphere, the album contains heavy as dark-matter facemelters as easylistening acoustic ballads (only two ballads, don’t worry…).

Mixing and production quality isn’t the best I heard but the musicianship of each member in (Sic)monic is of great quality, this version of the album I aquired has 11 tracks. However it has recently been re-released with 4 bonus tracks as the band singed to Aural Music. I haven’t heard that one yet but am eager to, if the production is improved upon, and the obvious bonus of… bonus-tracks it won’t be a waste by the least bit.

It’s quite hard to explain just how great I find this album, especially in its whole it is a must-have if you like bands that are one, refreshing and two do not shy of experimenting with combinations of different subgenres.

Tracklist:

1. To The Fiendz…
2. Till The Morning Light
3. Somnambulist
4. Illumination
5. Of Blood And Grace
6. Requiem
7. Oxygen
8 . No Conscience
9. Just How Far Down Do You Want to Go?
10. Paradiseum
11. Acidic Epiphanies

myspace page
www.sicmonic.com