Apotheosynthesis

Coming off one of the worst flus I'd ever had, it was perhaps inadvisable to pick up the Everlasting Spew re-release of Fractal Generator's 2015 debut LP, Apotheosynthesis, an album that contains such noisy dissonance that the remaining sinus pressure in my noggin immediately assumed a kind of waveform. But this highly technical black/death/grind mishmash has interesting points of its own, especially for listeners who appreciate the extreme edge of metal experimentation. The band takes its sci-fi theming seriously; all the songs cover sci-fi and ecological themes, and the three members credit themselves under thirteen-digit numbers instead of their names. The downtuned guitars have a gutteral buzz to them, but in addition are played in a cascade of choppy riffs, the thrum of each supporting the next, resulting in an effect something like that of a jackhammer, especially combined with the double-kicked drumming. Given the breakneck speed and all the abrupt riff changes, you'd imagine this to be pretty difficult to listen to unless one was really into tech death, but they do slow it down and make more digestable music further into some of the tracks, such as Abandon Earth, where the fret-wankery that is ubiquitous on the album gets accentuated with a sci-fi-effect keyboard and later moves onto a smoother, more rhythmic end. On others, the tunes get very slightly more traditional, though never losing their feeling of being almost ready to fly out of formation and warp to the next system. The guitars on Paragon, hitting sullen depths not quite reached before, are matched by a more measured rhythm that describes the perfection and utter meaninglessness of a utopian, post-Singularity world. Human takes the concept further, with hushed keyboards backing profound, emphasized chords in between riff sessions. The track I liked the most, though, Reflections, consists of a partly clean instrumental, filled with warm, blurry synths, that builds up into the band repeating the same theme, interspersed with quotes from Carl Sagan and sound effects from old sci fi movies, till it fades out into a few minutes' blank. When it comes back, it's the guitars playing space-themed atmospheric tunes, soft and clean. While it's probably not going to win any prizes among fans of safer metal genres, Apotheosynthesis is enjoyable. Fans of Demilich or Zyklon might give this a go. Bandcamp: https://everlastingspewrecords.bandcamp.com/album/apotheosynthesis.