Hard to imagine that Canada's Neuraxis have been delivering technical death metal since 1997, but that is indeed the case, and their sixth album overall, Asylon is another step in the direction that should make them a household name for all tech-death fans. Their label Prosthetic Records has to be happy with Asylon, as Neuraxis have put together a pretty spellbinding collection of hard hitting, complex burners here that will easily appeal to those who can't get enough of acts like Obscura, Decrepit Birth, Cannibal Corpse, Nile, Spawn of Possession, and Braindrill.
The production values of Asylon are quite good, and most of the songs, despite their complex nature, contain a good amount of melody. Take for instance "Savior & Destroyer", a pummeling track that still manages to stuff some catchy guitar licks and memorable riffs into what is otherwise nearly 5 minutes of death metal insanity. "By the Flesh", "Asylum", and "Truama" feature some jackhammer rhythms and precision riffing, while "Sinister" shows off some of the off-kilter polyrhythms that you might often find on a Meshuggah album. "Left to Devour" sees mammoth, complex riffery flying about the mix amidst pummeling drums blasts and inhuman growls, as brutal a slice of technical death metal mayhem as you will hear this year.
Though Asylon could have used a little more variation as far as tempos are concerned (much of the album is performed at Mach1000 speeds), that is more a criticism of the technical death metal sub-genre in general than a knock on Neuraxis. Overall, this is a highly enoyable complex extreme metal platter, and if you don't yet have Neuraxis in your radar, you really should.
Track Listing
- Reptile
- Asylum
- Savior & Destroyer
- By the Flesh
- Sinister
- Trauma
- Resilience
- Purity
- V
- Left to Devour
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