This album should not be good.
There are more mediocre technical death metal bands than there are fish in the sea, and as a whole, the style has been approaching self-parody for years. Recently, the best albums that qualify as both “technical” and “death metal” stand out in some other fashion, either by transcending labels through brilliance (Gorguts) or being so wonderfully over-the-top as to carve their own little spot (Wormed). The standard, super polished, tighter-than-a-New-York-subway-car, robotically-constructed tech death band rarely finds a way to grab ears in the general metal public.
Which is why Engineering the Void, the sophomore full length by Sweden’s Soreption, should not be good. It is, however, quite good.
Soreption’s success doesn’t come from artistic ingenuity or even originality within their techy framework, but rather by choosing to ape – successfully so – a few of the genre’s greatest flag bearers. Because the riffs of Anton Svedin often carry such a Vogg-ish quality, the most immediate and apparent comparison is to Decapitated. As can be heard on opener “Reveal the Unseen,” Soreption pays homage with blistering, precise intent. Add in plenty of Anata (“Monumental Burden”), a lot of the types of “hooks” that Muhammed Suicmez paints all over Necrophagist tunes, and you end up with a pretty nice mix of contortionist metal’s best.
Key to the quality of this album is in how Soreption finds a nice balance between being complete twiddling wankaholics and never forgetting that they are an actual death metal band. Don’t let this fool you into thinking Engineering the Void isn’t a busy busy busy record. It is, as Soreption shreds, twitches, shuffles, grooves, arpeggi-ates (?), rapid fires, pummels, sweeps, and pinches their way all over these tunes, but these are merely flairs on a quality framework. Helping to keep things on the offensive is vocalist Fredrik Soderberg, who brings a kind of Frank Mullen-by-way-of-Randy Blythe rhythmic attack, often cutting through the band’s robotic tendencies to bring a much needed human side. Also helping is the album’s brevity, a mere 35 minutes in total. Organic Hallucinosis may not have achived quite the classic status had it been 70 minutes long, and the same thing applies here. Tech death is exhausting enough to the listener. Know how much is enough.
Engineering the Void is by no means a perfect album. There are moments when it falls victim to some genre clichés, and certain passages such as the breakdown and symphonic elements in “Breaking the Great Narcissist” are only somewhat successful. But to the right ears, the horn-o’-plenty of riffdom smashed onto this album will be irresistible. It might be a stretch, because this is after all technical death metal, but when hearing the brashness of the closing title track, you almost get a sense that Soreption is having fun with this material. A silly notion, right?
