Seance - Saltrubbed Eyes
Review: This is absolutist death metal stripped down for travel, using fewer chords and arpeggiated overlays and more direct and sinuous riffing of power chords and sturdy but intricate leads. Grating in an ear-abusive manner previously confined to grindcore and underground techno, this music elaborates on the European style of narrative speed/death metal with touches of American heavy and simple thundering music.
Often disconnected, these songs betray a confused heritage of rock, metal and underground Swedish death metal which they fuse with pure rhythm and abrupt interrupt-based structure. This seam is smoothed by adroit use of percussion in both drums and guitar, which through deft hints drops a framework for changes to come. Where excellent they are both pugilistic and synthetic in joining randomness to a line of understanding, especially on the atmospheric instrumental concluding the album.
Alert blast beat variation progresses throughout songs that embrace both hollow explosive speed and more deliberately, counter-paced rhythmic development. Riffs are mostly of the chromatic or lightly melodic nature in the Swedish style, citing frequently from pentatonic minor and diatonic major scales as useful in the construction of armatures of sound connecting through melody distant paths between familiar tonal events.
Gruff expletives of vocalization guide guttural each piece with a vomitous cadence to song verses, disintegrating in howling skeins of abraded sound as chorus or transition spurs frenzied tempo. A deliberately precise but basic instrumentation and ease of manipulation of song structure suggest a subtle but powerful musicianship behind this band. What keeps this album relevant is the recursion to core concepts and the resulting streamlined transition of consciousness into the dark world of its art.