Today, there are a number of technical death metal outfits,
mathcore, Djent you name it, that display their ability to create an insane
brand of music that will leave the listener wondering what follow after each
section of insanity. Now, that can be both a good thing and a bad thing, as
sometimes the anticipation of wonder is rewarded with an intriguing sound,
while other times, the end result can be disappointing to say the least. I find
when a band attaches their sound to their ability to create time shift madness,
their needs to be additional layers to their sound to compliment those shifts or
else it just comes off as a display of untethered madness.
“Restless Mutation” is quite an anomaly. The madness
displayed here is technical death metal at heart, but with so many weird
aspects to it that it might have to be filed under a separate genre. The aforementioned
time shifts are accompanied with machine gun drums (listen to the opening of "Calamus Will Animate". It sounds like the machine gun from the "Get Some" helicopter scene from Full Metal Jacket), slamming elements, bizarre tempo
changes and vocals ranging from brutal death to almost rap. This is literally a
cornucopia of sounds and emotions to create an atmosphere that could have only
been concocted within the laboratory of a mad scientist.
The spastic riffs, short blasts of solos and intense hooks
put on quite a display of technical death metal prowess. The drumming must be a
drum machine, right? No human could play at that tempo, right? The drumming is
indeed handled by a human, Spencer Prewett to be exact, although it could be
possible that he is just a T-800 cybernetic organism with living tissue over a
metal endoskeleton, but who knows for sure? I may be alone here, but Oli Peters
reminds me a lot of Brendon Small from Dethklok. Something about his murky
sound, I don’t know. That being, said, Peters’ display a wide range of vocal
abilities on “Restless Mutation” that I feel fits the insanity perfectly.
I know there are plenty of technical death albums that seem
to just feel forced or try to focus so much on the technical mechanics that
they fail to put together a complete product. Everyone is entitled to their
opinion and mine is that, “Restless Mutation” is a fine display of bizarre
technical death metal, whose elemental sums form the whole of a unique and fun
listen. Maybe you’ll like this album, maybe you’ll find it to be a gimmick.
Either way, there is only one way to find out and I recommend giving “Restless
Mutation” at least one listen to hear for yourself.
Highlights: “Calamus Will Animate” “Involuntary Doppelganger”
“A Dark Horizontal” “Human Murmuration”
Rating: 4
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