Written by Carcassbomb
Atrae Bilis – Divinihility
Technical Brutal Death Metal from Canada
Released August 14th, 2020
Via Transcending Obscurity Records
9/10
Stand by for high impact music. This is a dissonant piece that manages to subvert the trappings of many dissonant bands who rely on one or two repeated chord or feedback gimmicks to produce the dissonance. These guys achieve it with the song writing. Top it off with some very nice artwork and you have here a damn fine album.
The intro track is great, I normally loathe intros but it did well to show us the guitars and chaotic energy of the rhythm section up front. It’s not a painful ambient opener which is just the worst, this opens with a crushing display of what’s to come. This is how you do it, this is how you set it up. The vocals hit on the second track with abhorrent lows and shrieking mids, albeit the latter is a rarity – more flavor in the writing than the core style of the band. This is tight musicianship and always heavy.
Let’s talk cosmetics. We have another brilliant piece from Adam Burke who is one of the single most talented artists in the scene right now. There’s a lot of great artists but many of them stick to a particular theme or color palette (Ahem, Lewandowski) but if you look at the catalogue of Burke you see constantly changing scenery with a strong variety of characters, placed upon the covers of striking but very different albums. From tech death to doom and everything in between, I’m always interested. I like the pun of the album title too with the dichotomy of divinity and nihilism, how closely the two travel, both in terms of loss of faith and finding faith.
Atrae Bilis: Bandcamp / Spotify / Transcending Obscurity
Above is my favorite track of the album, ‘A Ceremony Of Sectioning’. This track is the perfecting ending for this album, it has a certain oomph to it that feels like a summary of everything you’ve heard so far but intensified, running towards the finish line. The ending of the track itself is perfect too, a feverish pace and pitch brought to a halt by a bell and elongated thud that rings out like a shart. It won’t take too long to reach this climax either as the whole release is just over the 20 minute mark, making the composition here even more impressive because it feels like a completed journey.
Canada has been ripping assholes this year with tech death releases with releases from Thy Hallowed Catharsis, Killitorous and Beneath The Massacre. Atrea Bilis are another worthy addition to your library and will be out on the 14th of August.
9/10
Be the first to comment