ALBUM REVIEW: Surveillance Orgy – Februus
With a lot of one-person acts it can be very easy to tell that the music has been written and recorded by just one person. In black metal and death metal especially, there’s got to be several hundreds, perhaps thousands, with only a small number of bands standing out as not only solid, but exceptional at what they do. Born out of the mind of Andres Karlsson, Sweden’s FEBRUUS are one of those few bands that are not just creating great music, in this case a brand of technical death metal with a generous dose of progressive touches, but providing arguably some of the most stellar examples of that style in recent years. For evidence of this, look no further than the band’s debut album, Surveillance Orgy, a record that draws from a broad range of influences to develop what is easily one of the best tech-death albums of the last few years, whilst making lots of room for a powerful classic death and thrash influence.
Gentrification Of The Soul is an incredibly ambitious start, blending frenetic rhythms with slick, technical melodies to create a near impenetrable, demented sound very early on. In amongst the rabid, experimental musicianship that looms large in this song’s sound, there’s a palpable old school death metal influence that cuts through and adds a timeless edge to this extremely jarring track, with the opaque vocals and stringent, chunky flourishes especially lending it a meatier undercurrent, steadily taking on a more structured form, without sacrificing any of the unhinged elements.
Morning Star Over Deathlehem carries forward the chaotic elements of the preceding song, but develops a slower, more dissonant feel that still has lots of intensity and meandering riffs, but approaches the stringent touches in a considered and drawn out way, creating a doomier, darker sound punctuated by biting passages of death-thrash, again coupling a tried and tested formula with caustic, imaginative moments. The Price Of Enterprise counterpoints the sprawling and adventurous sound of the last two tracks with a shorter but more traditional slab of death metal that sees the leads take on a catchier, leaner edge, allowing the underlying ambience, rumbling bass and machine gun precise drumming to take a central role, with the bellicose vocals also providing some inspired, searing accompaniment to this impressively focused offering.
Surveillance Orgy takes the punchy riffs and groove-laden sound of the previous effort and expands upon it, resulting in a sound that sits somewhere between melodic and technical death metal, with bombastically frenzied and cacophonous rhythms providing some of this song’s most belligerent sections. The vocals veer between tar thick gutturals and acerbic snarls, complementing the ferocious music perfectly. As the song reaches its climax, some of those left field components that made earlier songs so fantastic begin to creep back in, with reserved, cleaner passages towards its closing moments abruptly turning the dynamics of the whole song on their head, creating a hypnotic lull that proves to be the calm before the storm that is this album’s final monolithic number.
Resignation Syndrome is, purely for its atmosphere alone, one of the album’s best tracks, adopting a crawling, ponderous pace with a few blistering bursts of energy peppered throughout, and leaving lots of room for the guitars to branch out into melody-driven and grating territories, making it impressively wide-ranging in sound and amplifying the progressive undertones in some of this song’s many immersive moments. Despite the fact that this is close to 15 minutes in length, it’s interesting and engrossing, capping this album off with an offering that’s every bit as diverse and adventurous as the one it began on.
Surveillance Orgy is one of those rare kinds of debut albums that sees the band performing on it not so much perfecting their style on their first major outing, and it’ll be incredibly hard to find a band that is approaching the more technical and progressive ends of death metal in such an interesting and fresh way. The virtuosic guitar playing on here, rather than feeling showy without providing any significant riffs, as is the case with many tech death bands, showcases a frenzied and experimental style with some stunning flourishes that fits into the established mould, but also provides a more energetic and intriguing take on that style that embraces dissonance and disjointed hooks to maximise the effect of this music. In truth, the musicianship on all fronts is jaw dropping and inventive throughout, capturing a sharper, belligerent sound that repurposes what a technical death metal band is able to accomplish within this micro-medium.
Rating: 9/10
Surveillance Orgy is out now via Transcending Obscurity Records.
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