ARTIFICIAL BRAIN — Artificial Brain (review)

ARTIFICIAL BRAIN — Artificial Brain album cover

Album · 2022 · Technical Death Metal

4.5/5 · 2023-01-26
siLLy puPPy

Tech death metal is one thing and progressive death metal is another but sometimes the two trajectories cross paths like a supply stop on the silk road so many centuries ago. ARTIFICIAL BRAIN has the perfect moniker for the modern world where A.I. threatens to become self-aware and take over the planet as we carbon-based lifeforms become expendable commodities but i digress. This Long Island, NY band has been around for just over a decade now and has tackled the dilemma of how to evolve death metal into the next phase like many a band struggling to take its compositional fortitude beyond the beefy machismo of incessant physicality.

Ever since Gorguts upped the ante there’s been a sort of arms race to seamlessly merge the world of progressive rock with the technical brutality of death metal and while many have failed in this daunting task, some like ARTIFICIAL BRAIN seem to have been born for this task. This quintet of deathly noise makers is unusual in that it features six members which includes the occasional use of a saxophone :o No worries death metal stalwarts, this is pummel your friggin’ brains out central with no signs of jazzy interludes interfering with the mission of unleashing blackened death metal riffage from the depths of Hades through sonic portals via modern technology.

I must say that this set of ten tracks successfully employs all the benefits of brutal death metal characteristic well with the progressive underbelly of a rock in opposition convention without sacrificing the lamb of death metal standards. Tough tightrope act i know but ARTIFICIAL BRAIN on its third and eponymously titled album seem to pull it off remarkably well after a tech death focused debut and a blackened atmospheric sophomore release. On this third installment of the ARTIFICIAL BRAIN universe everything comes together very well with a bizarre merging of the savagery of extreme metal bombast with a keen sense of rhythmic turbulence that is as unrelenting as a prostitute in the red light district of Amsterdam (OMG have you been there?)

This album really nails the holy trilogy of melding black metal, death metal and progressive rock into a holy union. Whether animals were sacrificed to achieve that remains a mystery but somehow this group of Long Islanders found the stabilizing elixir of sound to make this disco-death mess work so well. Everything is balanced perfectly with the tones, timbres and extremes of death metal in the sonority perfectly blending with the progressive compositional doughtiness. This album packs a punch for sure and is that really a tree emerging from the forest and giving the middle finger? Oh how my imagination gets out of control sometimes. Just listen to the track “Embalmed With Magma” and then you’ll get the gist of how this band has totally created a prog / death metal chimera of unthinkableness.

While a lot of death metal can sound the same to those not indoctrinated into its stealth bombing of the senses, close attentive listens can be quite rewarding since the genre demands a careful inspection of its mechanical underpinnings to differentiate it from a multitude of similarly hyperactive speed freaks. To perform such antics at these breakneck speeds is impressive indeed and ARTIFICIAL BRAIN has either sold out to A.I. to make this album possible or is indeed a very talented posse of carbon-based human lifeforms that has done its homework in constructed a chimera of utmost beauty blackened by the harshness of aural ugliness. Well, any way you slice it i’m in. What really works about this is a) the growly vocals are low in the mix b) the production is stellar and c) the musicianship is above average. Not a masterpiece of the ages but an excellent proggy death metal experience for sure.