AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: RAISING THE VEIL — “BOSONIC QUANTVM PHENOMENA”

 

In the wake of a successful crowd-funding campaign this past spring, the multinational group Raising the Veil are now releasing their debut album Bosonic Quantum Phenomena,. Last month we premiered a single from the new album, and today we’re helping bring you the premiere of a full album stream.

This new album is the band’s second release overall, following their 2012 EP Yucatanimvs, and the limited CD version of the album not only includes eight new tracks but also a re-mastered version of the three songs from the EP. Our stream includes all 11 songs.

If you’re not familiar with this band, their membership includes Austrian vocalist George Wilfinger (Monument of Misanthropy, Disfigured Divinity, ex-Miasma), Canadians Daniel McLellan (guitar) and Denis Landry (bass), and Necrophagist drummer Romain Goulon from France. This is one of those cross-border collaborations that would not have been possible without the advent of such things as home studios and file-sharing technologies. But although such creative partnerships may have become more common with the advance of those technologies, the results in this case are unusually good.

Actually, “jaw-dropping” and “head-spinning” would be better adjectives.

 

 

The music is very difficult to sum up succinctly, but the best brief approximation would be a union of technical death metal and progressive metal. The songs pack the aggressive punch of death metal, fueled by Wilfinger’s leonine roars and skin-splitting shrieks and propelled by Goulon’s pneumatic drumwork. But the songs are also wonderfully transportive, with beautifully written melodies performed on both guitar and keyboard that very easily take you outside yourself — and off the planet entirely. And the album is also wonderfully imaginative and dynamic, with changes of mood and frequent surprises around almost every corner (be sure to check out the beginning of “Superdense Coding Scheme”, for example).

But there is still more to the music than this combination of bruising aggressiveness and sublime flights of imagination. The instrumental performances are also intricate, physically demanding, and remarkably dextrous and fluid. It’s the kind of head-twisting instrumental flash we often hear these days in the most exuberant tech-death bands, but here that top-shelf skill is integrated with the other ingredients mentioned above — including all those attractive, memorable melodies.

And on top of all those good things, the music sounds fantastic from a production standpoint, with the clarity that this kind of music demands and a balance in the mix that allows all the component pieces to be appreciated in detail. All in all, this is a really fine album, an engrossing listen from the very first, and one that stands up extremely well to repeat listening.

Bosonic Quantum Phenomena can be ordered on CD here, either on its own or with shirt bundles (and a digital version will be available too):

http://raisingtheveil.bigcartel.com/

Follow Raising the Veil on Facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Raising-The-Veil/228193313916523