DISSIMULATOR — Lower Form Resistance (review)

DISSIMULATOR — Lower Form Resistance album cover

Album · 2024 · Technical Thrash Metal

4/5 · 2024-02-17
siLLy puPPy

While technical death metal has swept across the metal universe and practically dominated it in the 21st century, technical thrash metal has been primarily been kept in the past with bands like Voivod, Coroner and Sadus keeping the style relevant. Sure there has been the occasional band like Vektor and Demoniac that came from nowhere and gave the genre a modern makeover but overall the world of death metal has more than eclipsed the thrash output since the 90s. However that very well may be changing as many tech death bands are feeling like they’re swimming in a very crowded fishbowl. Enter the Montreal based DISSUMULATOR.

While a seemingly new band that also came from nowhere, this power trio is actually a seasoned collection of extreme metal veterans who have been haunting Quebec’s extreme metal scene for a very long time now. The band consists of bassist Antoine Daigneault of the death metal bands Chthe’ilist, Punished, Serocs and the funeral doom outfit Atramentus, percussionist Philippe Boucher most famously of Beyond Creation but also from First Fragment, Incandescence, Vengeful and Chthe’ilist as well as guitarist / vocalist Claude Leduc who was also in both Atramentus and Chthe’ilist as well as Sutrah.

Quite the resume for a mere trio and all that experience comes to play on the band’s debut LOWER FORM RESISTANCE which takes all that tech death metal experience and adapts it all into the world of thrash metal. The results are nothing less than spectacular. Taking on the basic form of a traditional thrash metal album complete with the arpeggiated clean twin guitar harmonic parts to serve as palette cleansers, the band also employs all those tech thrash styles that allowed bands like Anacrusis, Mekong Delta and Hellwitch the ticket to sprucing up the traditional thrash metal techniques that were all the rage in the late 80s and early 90s.

And while a blurry gray area between the world’s of death metal and thrash metal are certainly nothing new, DISSIMULATOR creates something akin to deathened thrash metal, that being a hybrid of thrash musically speaking only accompanied by death metal growls as well as some of the technical workouts associated with death metal. With the blitzkrieg attack deliveries of early Sadus, the technical precision of modern tech thrash perfection as heard from Vektor and a propensity creative infusions that make thrash sound fresh again, DISSUMLATOR has made thrash metal relevant again just when you thought it had completely fizzled out as with nothing more than retro bands keeping the candle burning. Replete with sci-fi themes, DISSIMULATOR captures the spirit of classic Voivod and set to a modernized technical explosiveness like few others have captured in recent years.

While flawlessly capturing the spirit of classic thrash metal, DISSIMULATOR delivers attacks of brutal precision rarely heard in thrash metal of any era with a special nod to drummer Philippe Boucher’s advanced technical workouts that made Beyond Creation one of the most memorable proggy tech death metal bands of the last decade. Infused with passion and creativity, LOWER FORM RESISTANCE is one of the best thrash metal releases i’ve heard in some time and offers everything i love about the genre. Unapologetically brash and unafraid to explore new dynamics, DISSIMULATOR is yet another successful feather in these fine musicians’ caps. Perhaps not quite to the level of the trilogy of Vektor albums of the last decade mostly due to the rather monotonous vocal style, LOWER FORM RESISTANCE nevertheless excels on full musical pistons and is an outstanding modern thrash metal release.