By Philip Whitehouse
Italian quartet
Death Heaven released this demo in February of 2005,
and a quick Google search will reveal a more or less uniformly positive
critical reception.
Techno Decomposition World deserves the positive
attention too - while it's not exactly an earth-shattering death metal
landmark, it does showcase a very promising young technical death metal band
with the potential to carry their sound to far higher climes. The demo was
engineered by the group's vocalist/guitarist Andrea, who was 18 at the time.
He's done a pretty damned good job - I mean, Neil Kernon won't be shaking in
his boots, but you can hear everything clearly, there is some nice, limited
integration of samples and electronic elements into the mix, and the guitar
tone is pretty thick.
The material itself is as ambitious as the undertaking - long, epic
technical death metal songs with complex and varied song structures,
encompassing mid-tempo groove, blastbeat frenzies, extended fret-melting
lead breaks and stop-on-a-dime tempo changes. All in all, pretty impressive
stuff. However, the band have yet to fully realise their potential. For
instance, the band seem to have gotten so wrapped up in creating five to ten
minute tracks that they've ended up tossing every musical idea they've had
into the mix, resulting in the compositions occasionally feeling meandering
and bloated. There are stunning riffs, to be sure, but there are also some
pretty mediocre ones padding out the running time. Also, the musicianship,
while accomplished, isn't as tight as it could be. This criticism is
particularly aimed at the drummer, who, while obviously talented,
occasionally appears to struggle to keep time and ends up delivering a few
sloppy fills and double-kick patterns, affecting the overall tightness and
punch of the material.
Despite these criticisms, however,
Techno Decomposition World is
definitely worthy of the attention of any fan of ambitious, technical death
metal - if you can get around the too-long track lengths and the occasional
mistimed drum fill, there is some excellent music to be heard here (check
out the acoustic guitar passage in 'The Cannibal Of Milwaukee', for instance).
I'll be listening to this one again, and await with great interest the next
effort from this promising group.
7/10
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