AN NCS PREMIERE: FRACTAL GENERATOR — “AEON”

 

More than six years have passed since Fractal Generator launched their debut album Apotheosynthesis, a significant span of days to be sure, but not nearly long enough to dim the eye-popping, jaw-dropping impressions of that debut, all of which came roaring back when I learned that Fractal Generator would be returning with a sophomore full-length, the name of which is Macrocosmos. It will be released by Everlasting Spew Records on January 15th.

However, six years is long enough that some of you might only now be encountering this Canadian band for the first time. I looked back at what I wrote to accompany our three premieres for Apotheosynthesis (which included a stream of the album as a whole), and found this passage:

“Their music displays a lot of technically barn-burning fretwork and hyper-blasting drum technique, perhaps not completely machine-like but most definitely head-spinning — the kind of dizzying experience that simulates giving your brain a ride in a high-speed centrifuge. And the music also includes some cold, eerie melodic elements that, when coupled with the instrumental exuberance, conjure images of alien technicians either constructing or dismantling some massive device or edifice beyond our understanding”.

 

 

The sci-fi elements of the band’s aesthetic no doubt influenced that choice of words, as did the fact that the group’s members identified themselves with numbers, and they still do: 040118180514 (Bass, Vocals), 040114090512 (Drums), and 102119200914 (Guitar, Vocals). As you can see through the eye-catching cover art and the new band photo, they remain faithful to that aesthetic. As you’re about to learn through today’s track premiere, they’ve also maintained many of the signal elements of the sound on their debut album, but if anything the new music is even more frightening and head-spinning.

This new song, “Aeon“, manages to be stunningly brutal, technically extravagant, and atmospherically blood-freezing. Jolting, jackhammering grooves, yowling chords, blistering drumwork, and deep, voracious growls immediately create an experience that’s both destructive and ecstatically vicious. Gigantic low-frequency detonations go off as the music becomes even more frenzied through assaults of maniacally skittering and scissoring fretwork, full-bore drum fusillades, and crazed vocal tirades.

Streamers of phosphorescent melody gloriously sweep above these sounds of berserker alien combat, which continue to drive adrenaline levels like a rocket engine. There comes a point at which the band restrain the mayhem, but only to run the listener through a gauntlet of start-stop, pile-driving punishment, accented by filaments of disturbing dissonance that transform into an eerie, rippling and ringing, audio vision as the drummer spits bullets. They then then finish the job with one final merciless and mechanized beating, the kind that will leave you smiling through broken teeth.

 

 

By January 15th we’ll all probably have a better idea about whether 2021 is likely to be as miserable as 2020. But whether it is or isn’t, Macrocosmos will be a great way to begin it.

Everlasting Spew recommends Macrocosmos for fans of Zyklon, Morbid Angel, Aeon, and early Decapitated. The label plans to release Macrocosmos in CD, vinyl, and digital formats. It was recorded at Soundstream Studio and produced by Fractal Generator, and none other than Stefano Morabito mixed and mastered it at 16th Cellar Studio in Rome. The fantastic cover art was created by Erskine Designs. Pre-orders are open now:

PRE-ORDER:
PHYSICAL: https://bit.ly/31Qc3qf
DIGITAL: https://bit.ly/34FvnbL

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