[Cover art by Fleshflies]
Artificial Brain remains a bit of an enigma within the wider death metal realm, especially when trying to find accurate sub-sub-genre descriptors. They’re technical but not really tech/death; brutal but nowhere near slam; melodic but definitely don’t call them melodeath; infused with blackened riffs without being black/death metal; and experimental without having any avant-garde flairs.
They’re a touch strange, all sci-fi-obsessed and nonlinear as they explore the vast cosmos through their particular brand of deathly heavy metal, but key to their success is their ability to balance all of this into truly interesting songs. Yes, they might call to mind everyone from Gorguts and Death to Demilich and Ulcerate, but their balance, their fusion of these disparate influences and styles into a sound all their own, has made them one of the most exciting bands in modern death metal.
Typically when a band experiences so much change, you can expect the sound and style to shift with the personalities and circumstances. With Artificial Brain, you’d barely realize it. Not that album number four Antillia doesn’t have a personality all its own within the greater Artificial Brain catalog – it does – but it’s still 100 percent identifiable as Artificial Brain. That means the guitars do a lot of brutal riffing but also offer shimmery, open-picked passages to amplify that space vibe, the bass pwongs and flutters while providing great contrast, and the production emphasizes clarity over traditional chonk (don’t worry–it’s still mighty hefty). Paparo in particular does his best to assure that long-time fans don’t miss the old days, with enough dynamic range, guttural prowess, and overall presence to handily make the band and album his own.
It also means Antillia is both really great and really smart.
But it’s a sneaky kinda smart. This record is pretty damn mindbending, to be sure, but it never sounds like it’s trying to make a big show of its brains. Point being: this stuff rocks but does so with so much smarts that you don’t spend the entire time focusing on the smarts, but instead on how much it rocks. Get it? Good. This is deftly written stuff, with each song comprising its own little journey, rarely choosing a direct path from A to B but always ending up at a logical, thrilling point B. Look no further than the dynamic breadth of “Planet: Carrion,” which ranges from warbly slower material to full blasting rage, for a great example. Overall, Antillia feels as nonlinear and searching as anything they’ve done, as if the music itself is attempting to uncover some secret of the universe.
It’s also clear how hard Artificial Brain worked to fill this album with cool touches or details–that, or everyone in the band just plays with nuance all the time (why not both?). Either way, the effect is the same: you’ll constantly have cool things to chew on as each song travels along its strange path. From the wicked 16th/8th pattern in “Quantum Malignancies” and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it dual lead in “Deciphering the Anachronistic Tongues of the Relic Satellites” to the sorrowful black metal passages in “Cosmic Death Church” and the great, rapid-fire bass counter in “Against the Furthest Reaches of the Light,” this record is always doing something rad.
That they manage to whip all of these neato ingredients into truly compelling songs is a testament to their collective songwriting talents as a unit. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the closing title track, which has some of the proggiest material on the record and some of the most intense and alarming, which helps to give the whole record a sense of finality and closure.
Artificial Brain has delivered yet another killer slab of spaced out death metal goodness. Antillia is as out there in style as it is infectious and enticing in its composition, and a deft balancing act between many of extreme metal’s very specific corners. Anyone with even the slightest taste for death metal’s more experimental fringes – or a love for unconventional song structures – should get this in their ears post haste.
