If hard-hitting, invigorating death metal is your bag, then this could be just for you. “Swarm” is the first punching thrusting melody of “Mechanisms of Omniscience”, the US band’s second full release.
Brutality and technicality are the order of the day from Abnormality whose targeted audience is “the blue collar worker who’s killing him or herself to live, and the kid stuck at home who’s listening on headphones”. Sure enough, it’s uncompromising and pretension-free. After three tracks of brutality and anger, “Catalyst of Metamorphosis” messes with our brain with a bit of industrial-cosmic death metal catastrophe. “Vigilant Ignorance” starts with the customary explosion and triggering. The guitar guns spray high and low and wildly, and meanders into deeper and darker territory as the familiar death metal pattern holds it together. After the knife-twisting “Vigilant Ignorance”, further technical energy and chugging brutality are expended on “Irreversible” and “Hopeless Masses”. It’s relentless. Just as I was expecting wall-to-wall death metal, a more doomy-death feast “Assimilation” descends upon us. The piledriving thunder returns with “Cymatic Hallucinations”. The charge is on. I was disappointed when it ran out. The album finishes with “Consuming Infinity”, in parts a Behemoth-like tirade but above all a crashing plethora of death metal destruction.
This is as honest as it gets. There’s nothing especially original about “Mechanisms of Omniscience” but thanks to its exciting riffs, energetic drum lines and relentless brutality and power, it will shake you to the core.
(7/10 Andrew Doherty)
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