ENTHEOS — Time Will Take Us All (review)

ENTHEOS — Time Will Take Us All album cover

Album · 2023 · Technical Death Metal

4.5/5 · 2024-03-01
siLLy puPPy

Starting out as a supergroup formed by ex-members of Animosity, Animals As Leaders and The Faceless, the USA based ENTHEOS (as opposed to the Canadian band of the same name) got its start in Santa Cruz, CA before relocating to Nashville, TN. Basically the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist who is the drummer in the live settings Navene Koperweis, this band underwent many lineup changes over the course of its existence that began in 2015 and spanned the course of an EP and three albums, the latest TIME WILL TAKE US ALL which emerged in 2023.

While 2017’s “Dark Future” saw the band as a quartet that relied heavily on keyboards, TIME WILL TAKE US ALL has been whittled down to the mere duo of female vocalist Chaney Crabb and Kopeweis who covers all guitars and drums however former member Evan Brewer does come back only demoted to session musician for whatever reason. This new monstrosity of an album sees the band expand in every conceivable direction with a lot more attention paid to the trippy atmospheres and the outstanding production.

While a technical death metal band, ENTHEOS nurtures a rather psychedelic ambience into TIME WILL TAKE US ALL and employs a mix of stylistic shifts to ensure a more varied album than previous efforts. While the album starts out on sheer brutality mode which showcases that ENTHEOS has lost none of its technical prowess in the ensuing six years since “Dark Future,” the album mellows a bit with “Oblivion” and “I Am The Void” which allows for Chaney Crabb to actually reveal her feminine charm with clean girl singing but wow she can scream and rip like the best tech death metal singers in the business and it’s utterly amazing how guttural growls are fairly genderless in how they are perceived!

TIME WILL TAKE US ALL features nine tracks at over 40 minutes of playing time and although this band has primarily existed as to showcase the technical wizardry of the seasoned veterans on board, this third album reveals that Koperweis is a gifted songwriter in general since the tracks on this third installment allow much more varied passages that range from the usual tech death brutality to surreal stints of psychedelia in the vein of Blood Incantation or other psych death metal bands have conjured up. The beauty is in the details on this one and the fact that Koperweis was in complete control of the project basically means he could take his baby any direction he so chooses and in this case he chose wisely.

With the band’s earliest connections to deathcore, TIME WILL TAKE US ALL showcases all those vocal trade offs between guttural growls and demonically possessed gargling utterances along with a series of various chugging sessions, drumming styles and interesting compositional changes that allow the tracks to drift into a series of changes. The results are quite satisfying as ENTHEOS loses none of the overall brutality of its past but adds so many different layers, recording techniques and sonic flavors that this album is an instantly exciting one. While the chaotic swirls of tech death are never far away, ENTHEOS also chooses to let melodic moments dominate the soundscape for a while. It’s a nice mix between the caustic chaos and the more pleasant placidity of traditional metal moments.

While i was not overly familiar with this band until this release i have to say that i was quite surprised by how well this album is written and recorded. It’s a bonafide treasure as far as crafting a nice diverse palette of sounds that includes groove metal, grunge, jazz, prog and others into the labyrinthine tech death metal workouts. When the melodic parts do occur there are interesting dissonant counterpoints that keep it all from getting even close to cheesy. Koperweis is as much an accomplished guitarist as he is an extraordinary drummer and Chaney Crabb has some of the best female growls out there. A fine example of modern tech death done right. Not that i need my tech death to have moments of melody but it is nice when an album adds some bells and whistles in the production department that offer more onion layers to the mix. If done right it’s magical and this album is really done right.