Diskreet is a technical death metal five-piece hailing from Topeka, Kansas, presenting here their full-length debut, Engage the Mechanicality. Certainly students of the modern game, they sweep, chug, blast, gurgle, squeal, and growl their way through 11 tracks and nearly 40 minutes of very competent but ludicrously derivative tech death.
Unfortunately for the band, they still appear to be within the school of modern tech death, not yet graduating to higher ranks. What this means is that nearly every riff, tempo, vocal rhythm, and drum tool sounds lifted directly from a better known, more accomplished act. Most obvious are the guitar stylings of Necrophagist (the entirety of “Spinal Cord Collection”) or the more brutal leanings of Decrepit Birth (“Haunt of Fear”). However, Diskreet possesses neither the former’s exquisite skill in fashioning hooks nor the latter’s ability at deft songcraft. Toss in the occasional semi-slam passage, efforts at the Origin maelstrom, some hidden Suffocation homage and a squeaky clean presentation, and you get the idea.
Despite these limitations, Engage the Mechanicality contains a few very bright qualities that the band can (and should) build upon. First, each and every member is more than capable at playing this very demanding form of heavy metal, and there are several seriously great riffs hidden among the seemingly pilfered ones. “We Are Legion” contains many of these (a series of low-register tremolo lines are especially nice), and it comes as close to being a truly killer track as Diskreet offers up here. Secondly, the guitar solos are stellar, offering both sound technicality and engaging structure. The backup for the leads are also typically the most interesting parts of the songs–“Pawning the Sanctuary,” in particular–but those parts are often islands within otherwise confused compositions.
How you view this album will depend entirely on how you view a genre more saturated than India’s population density. And in no way am I saying that technical death metal is the only genre to feature this much blatant derivation or saturation. Far from it: every widespread style has reached ape-parody at one point or another. The issue for tech death is that by design it is robotic and completely devoid of personality, which leaves any lack of originality in the music department greatly exposed to the listener. Therein is the ultimate fault of Engage the Mechanicality: because it goes way beyond mere hero worship and into near-forgery it feels fraudulent. Will genre enthusiasts enjoy it? Undoubtedly, but even the most diehard fans might consider Diskreet to be Johnny-come-latelies.
