When I stumbled across this album, the second from the Quebecers, I immediately thought sci-fi meets technical meets the potential to be a bit convoluted and out of reach. Let’s face it, that can happen….but how cosmically wrong could I be? A fuck ton, is the answer you are looking for.
From the start of opener ‘Apophonic Rage’, it is gigantically apparent that this is essentially a death thrash album with some absolutely face-snogging riffs and played at a blistering pace. And when I say blistering, what I really mean is gas-guzzlingly rapid. Drum patterns are thrown out like handfuls of gravel, guitars switch from abrasive, classic 80s thrash chugs, through bouncy death metal styles and into deathy descending trems, and all the while a hollow and belly-expelling vocal spits all over everything. If you want to understand what that even sounds like, check out the title track.
To say that this is Coroner and Voivod joining forces and recording a classic death metal record sounds absolutely ludicrous – but it’s not far from the mark. Yet, when the signature (and explosively chunky) thrash chugs leap out of the speakers and pummel your head in tracks such as ‘Neon Metropolis’ and the velocity-defying closer ‘Robostrobus’, it’s clear that Dissimulator have a technical arsenal as big as both the aforementioned, and they damn well intend to use it.
‘Artifice Dissolves’ is an immensely enjoyable, grotesquely heavy and obliteratingly pacey affair that makes you want to let it spin over and over again. Try it….and you will see I am right. Guaranteed.
Best Paired with: travelling at the speed of sound wearing lycra, having no hair on top and scanning your own brain for worms.
dissimulator – Artifice Dissolves is out now on 20 Buck Spin.
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