“I put on the new Artificial Brain album and it ______ my ______” (• melted • face) (• battered • torso region) (• shredded all of • ligaments into goo) (• extracted • brain without anesthesia). To describe music they love, some metal enthusiasts default to expressions of bodily destruction and physical violence. The use of this shorthand does not necessarily betray violent or destructive tendencies in the speaker. Stylized verbal brutality, embellished with gory details, attempts to distill the extreme qualities of the music into a succinct mental image. “Artificial Brain drew in close, sized up my frail little body, and punched me right in the kidney.”
“Whoaaaa whaaat? I didn’t know the dudes in Artificial Brain _____ so ______” (• destroyed • hard) (• could play • fast) (• were • shredtacular) (• slayed • completely). Successful technical death metal projects harness the dexterity of their musicians to overwhelm the listener into a state of ecstatic paralysis. This can verbally manifest in bursts of hyperbole and nonsense intended to match the intensity of the musical experience. Over endless writing sessions and rehearsals, players hone their tightly structured compositions into a state of perfect synchronicity that could still sound to the uninitiated like a torrent of senseless noise. The precision of their performances yields willful insanity. They construct a specific chaos. Having tasted flavors of this chaos over and over, the enthusiast comes to discern and relish in the order beneath it.
Artificial Brain gets there. They stand apart from their tech-death peers by way of jarring tonalities and descents into down-tempo doom. Like forefathers Gorguts, the band regularly abandons a song’s development without notice in favor of mind-rending digressions of riffage. Like antecedents The Faceless, their sci-fi lyrical themes, forays into mutated synthesis, and bonkers album art conflate into an otherworldly atmosphere to complement the physical reality of their performances. Recorded and mastered by terrestrial metal deity Colin Marston, the album’s every blastbeat, intertwined guitar line, rapid-fire bass run, and guttural howl reach your eardrums with clarity. Stream Labyrinth Constellation below and expose all your weak spots for punishment — or order the album on CD from Profound Lore.
• Artificial Brain: http://artificialbrain.bandcamp.com
• Profound Lore: http://www.profoundlorerecords.com
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