(Andy Synn adds his voice to the cacophony of praise for Aberration‘s debut album, out now)
If you’re going to describe your music as “light-devouring, abyssal Death Metal” then you’d damn well better be able to back up that claim.
Good thing, then, that Aberration are more than capable of doing so.
Of course, we’re not the only ones who seem to think so, and doubtless you’ve already seen a number of reviews and write-ups heaping similar praise upon the group, most of which – understandably – put a lot of emphasis on the sheer size of the band’s gargantuan, bone-grinding guitars and the visceral, raw power of the drum work, both of which are on full display during monstrous, senses-shattering opener “Antithesis”.
But, for me – because, obviously, I have to have a slightly contrarian take – the most impressive, and most underrated, aspect of Refracture is the way the group subtly interweave their more atmospheric, and what could generously be called “melodic”, ambitions into the pyroclastic torrent of grisly gutturals and filthy distortion which pours from the speakers over the course of the album’s forty-two-and-a-half minutes.
Take the aforementioned opening track, for example – which finds space amidst all its blistering brutality and barely-controlled chaos for some absolutely excruciating passages of asphyxiating atmosphere, slowing the track down to a creeping, claustrophobic crawl which contrasts wonderfully with the song’s otherwise breakneck pace – or the eerie anti-melodies strewn throughout the helter-skelter hell-ride of “Blighted”, both of which showcase the band’s unusually dynamic, doom ‘n’ gloom injected approach to Death/Black Metal.
That’s not to say that the sheer nastiness and almost unrelenting intensity of the group’s ugly, uncompromising assault on the senses isn’t also worth the price of admission on its own, with songs such as dissonance-laced blast-a-thon “Wresting Vibrations” and the titanic, Teitanblood-esque sonic terrorism of “Interstitial Enmity” (whose humongous bass-lines are so thick and heavy that you can practically hear your neck muscles groaning under the weight) instantly identifying Aberration as one of the most punishing, and promising, new bands of the year (not that I’d expect anything less from members of Suffering Hour, Nothingness, and Void Rot).
However, the group’s full – albeit, still evolving – potential is only truly hinted at during the closing title-track, whose constantly shifting ebb and flow between full-force fury and doom-laden discordance, combining as it does the snarling savagery of War Metal at its most focussed and ferocious with the seething spitefulness of Disso-Death at its darkest, reaches new heights (and new depths) of vile, yet virulent, extremity, suggesting that, as good as Refracture is, we’re only just seeing the first signs of what Aberration are capable of.