ILLOGICIST — Subjected (review)

Album · 2004 · Technical Death Metal

4/5 · 2024-07-19
siLLy puPPy

Influenced by the early technical death metal skills of Death, Pestilence, Atheist and Cynic, ILLOGIST was formed in the Alpine city of Aosta in the northwestern region of Italy in 1997 by guitarist Luca Minieri and original drummer Remy Curtaz and soon joined bassist Roberto Zeppa and then a few other members who came and went until the original duo were left the only ones standing. After recruiting bassist Emilio Dattolo and guitarist Diego Ambrosi, ILLOGICIST was ready to record its debut release SUBJECTED which saw the light of day in 2004 on the Crash Music, Inc label. Prepare yourself for a thrashy deathened brutal ride into oblivion!

It wouldn’t take long for Remy Curtaz to jump ship after recording SUBJECTED leaving only Luca Minieri as a founding member. After recruiting drummer Sergio Ponti, ILLOGICIST embarked on a massive tour of Italy and Europe and has become a staple in European technical death metal ever since. This is a band that means business and it all started with this very debut featured a bedazzling array of nine tracks that bantered and brutalized the senses of nearly 39 minutes of punishing pummelation and raucous riffing rage. This is one of those bands that has the need for speed and SUBJECTED will, well, subject you to a ceaseless blitzkrieg frenzy of some of the most demanding death metal the genre has to dish out.

The album starts with a short intro of a faint scream from the distance before bursting into a neoclassical style of progressive technical death metal that sounds like what you could expect if Necrophagist met Death and perhaps a more thundering galloping thrash metal band like early Sadus. As far as the technical death metal riffing is concerned, ILLOGICIST delvers a relentless procession of fast-tempo speedfests that offer a dizzying array of proggy time signature deviations and hairpin curves well beyond anything Death, Atheist or Pestilence ever dreamed of however Minieri’s raspy screamed vocals do evoke a rather pissed off Chuck Schuldiner having a very bad day! The insane infusion of crazy time-signature riffage though is off the charts with a never-ending chugging in glitch time with fluid frills and fills finding their way into the nooks and crannies of this speed freak’s wet dream come true.

While the guitar neck melting finger breaking distorted bombast of the riffs is the strongest suit going for ILLOGICIST on SUBJECTED, the screamed vocals actually carry profundity as this band eschews worship of Satan or horror, gore and blood but rather engages in the abstract existential quandaries of spirituality and philosophy. In other words, this is nerd metal through and through! Also mentionable is Curtaz’s drumming ferociousness as he is as relentless at pummeling his drum kit into oblivion as is the guitar and bass freneticism. For whatever reason Curtaz never performed with other bands after departing so perhaps he had some health issue or lost interest but he certainly delivered some of the most relentless demanding time precision drumming skills not too far from the virtuosity of percussive wizards such as Virgil Donati.

The twin guitar attacks really add a ferocity well beyond what a single axe could pull making this an unforgiving wild roller coaster ride on the top of a speed train. This is really as demanding as technical and progressive death metal really gets. If these guys played any faster it would be imperceptible and considered noise (although some might think that already!) For those well steeped in the knotty angular brutality of technical death metal and love the most relentless of the lot then ILLOGICIST actually delivers a rather logical slab of molten metal on full fueled adrenaline mode for an entire album’s run with SUBJECTED. While the lineup would never remain the same for long and ILLOGICIST would deliver two more albums before disappearing from the scene, this debut is a force to be reckoned with.