EP REVIEW: The Architecture Of Oppression – Dominicide

Death metallers DOMINICIDE just upped their game by a significant margin. The Glaswegian four-piece trade in highly elaborate tech-death and their second EP, The Architecture Of Oppression, is a highly impressive piece of precision engineering. All four songs are packed with blast beats, wildly escalating guitar solos and enough wizardry to make the Eye Of Sauron take notice.

Opening track The Empowered for instance is a complex burst of cybernetic aggression. It combines the ruthless, paint-stripping onslaught of MISERY INDEX with the spiralling experimentation of the djent movement, and it barely gives you a moment to breathe. It’s so ludicrously over-the-top it’s almost a parody of itself, but the demented energy is intoxicating.

The Orchestraitors follows and is a hyperactive six and a half minutes. It’s played at a dizzying speed, led by a drummer who must have necked four cans of Red Bull at once before picking up the sticks, and boasts a genuinely inhuman vocal performance. This is death metal at its most savage and arguably the best track on here.

Theocracy offers no respite, it’s another neck-wrecking display of electric-fingered fret-burning and the outro is so heavy you could bend steel with it. Vocalist Craig Law sounds more machine than man and it only gets more violent in Reincarnate. Here, DOMINICIDE summon the ghosts of prog music past and let rip with them, the whole thing escalating into a bone-breaking epic. If GOJIRA had four snotty younger brothers who thought their elder siblings were wimps, this is probably what their band would sound like.

In short then, this surprisingly lengthy four-tracker is a remarkable jumping off point. There’s elements of symphonic metal and deathcore in here, but DOMINICIDE could best be described as a turbocharged riff machine with the subtlety turned off. The Architecture Of Oppression lacks any kind of hook or catchy chorus to latch onto, but the skill on display is undeniable. It’s the kind of metal you take to a wine and cheese night in a misguided attempt to prove that jazz and classical aren’t the only music genres to have a sophisticated palate. You won’t get invited back of course, but at least one of the snobs was intrigued and the Chateauneuf Du Pape was nice.

Rating: 8/10

The Architecture Of Oppression is out now via self-release.

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