ALBUM REVIEW: Breed Death – Sensory Amusia
Australia’s SENSORY AMUSIA are one of the shining lights of modern technical death metal. Combining a variety of different influences from across the extreme metal spectrum, and possessing a truly astounding level of musicianship, the Perth-based quartet have been stunning listeners for years with their impressive stylistic brew, with the band’s latest EPs, 2019’s In Extremis and 2020’s Bereavement, in particular turning plenty of heads and garnering some wider acclaim. The band’s latest album Breed Death stands as easily one of their most creative and ferocious outings to date, and serves as one of the more memorable technical death metal albums of recent years.
Birth Through Violence starts the album in an incredibly frenetic and intense fashion, with jarring time changes, intricate drums and dense, demented guitars giving this brief but impressive intro track a lot of impact. This leads into Yersinia Pestis, an equally energetic and unhinged piece of music with lots of great disjointed leads, bellicose gutturals and precise, machine-like rhythms, all of which lend this a feral, unpredictable edge. It also manages to balance its various influences well, with chunky death metal guitars vying with domineering deathcore and subtle djent sections for excellent results.
Vermin has a more groove-laden sound, but still maintains a lot of the speed and aggression of the preceding track, with the massive sound giving this, in spite of its brutality, an epic undercurrent that makes it all the more magnificent. Parasitic Alteration, another death metal juggernaut with a thick and punishing sound, strips away many of the overtly technical leads and sudden changes in pace. This isn’t to say that it’s any less ferocious than the previous songs; in spite of its minimalist approach to some of the guitars, it’s still a blisteringly fast and compelling slab of music that packs a significant punch.
Vulgar Thoughts Of Carnage starts the album’s second half with a far more melodic and lively offering, with tight hooks that walk the fine tightrope between catchiness and discordance extremely well. It injects a little melodeath, and later on some haunting ambient elements into the album’s sound, whilst still retaining the savage and inspired musicianship that lies at the core of the record. Bind Torture Kill takes the tighter elements of the previous two tracks and applies a brooding darkness to them, providing a sinister but incredibly memorable track, with the musical abilities of the whole band, but especially the guitars and drums, being fully evident at various points throughout this short but effective number.
A Blank Canvas Of Flesh sees the album at its most cinematic, with a layered and engrossing sound drawing the listener in immediately as the track shifts seamlessly between mid-paced, monumental rhythmic passages and urgent, cacophonous ones, illustrating that this band are perhaps at their best when their music is as feral and unpredictable as possible. Breed Death, the album’s final offering, is perhaps the track that best exemplifies this sentiment, with the music beginning in an unflinchingly dizzying and visceral way and then lurching from one brilliant riff and motif to the next, constantly keeping the listener guessing as to what they’ll do next. Pulling heavily from the band’s multitude of influences from across the extreme metal spectrum, it’s also an exceptionally diverse and varied piece of music, making it thoroughly impressive, if at times near impenetrable in terms of its scope and range, and serving as a strong and stunning conclusion to an equally fantastic record.
Identifying a suitable entry point from which to put across how good this album isn’t easy, as it’s near flawless on all fronts, from the technical musicianship to the obvious songwriting chemistry the band possess, to the slick and polished production that makes all of this so evident to the listener, to the broad range of influences and components that the band make use of throughout. Likewise, finding a point to pick at and criticise is similarly difficult, as everything that’s present on here is so impeccably well done and lean, leaving little if any dull moments. With Breed Death SENSORY AMUSIA have not only created their most cohesively brilliant output to date, but also produced an album that shows their ability to craft world class technical death metal.
Rating: 9/10
Breed Death is out now via Lacerated Enemy Records.
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