(We welcome to the site an NCS guest contributor who calls himself The Baby Killer, and he makes his debut with a review of the new EP from supergroup Blotted Science.)
Have you ever listened to an album and thought to yourself, “Wow, I never thought these guys would outdo the last one, but they just did”? Some albums, at the time of their release, such as Anaal Nathrakh’s In the Constellation of the Black Widow or Nile’s Annihilation of the Wicked, and more relevantly Blotted Science’s debut effort The Machinations of Dementia, seem like they just can’t be topped.
The technicality, atmosphere, or even just the sheer level of brutality seem so daunting when the albums come out, and when word later surfaces that the band is working on the follow-up, people tend to get polarized about the subject. Some say they can’t wait to hear what’s next, some say either it’s not going to be as good or it will just be the same album recycled for the fans, and the rest usually fall somewhere in the middle. And then when the next release does come out, everyone puts aside their differences to help pick up each other’s jaws off the ground. Such is the case with Blotted Science’s new EP, The Animation of Entomology.
Ron Jarzombek & co. don’t seem to have lost any of their momentum from their last full length, and instead have only gotten tighter. The addition of tech-death drum veteran Hannes Grossmann (ex-Necrophagist, Obscura) has given the band just the right shot of adrenaline they needed to really stand head and shoulders above their peers, worthy opponents of Animals As Leaders, Fleshwrought and Sleep Terror.
The Animation of Entomology‘s backbone is still the fluid combination of jazzy drums and rhythms over Jarzombek’s signature free-form weedily-weedilies, but the songwriting and structures are much more varied and diverse this time around, with the tempos ranging from slow and eerie to holy-fuck-my-arms-are-gonna-fall-off. I even found certain parts comparable to djent, but much heavier of course. It’s a veritable musical roller coaster, and the guy who designed it was probably on shrooms. Continue reading »