ALBUM REVIEW: Neoconception – Spectrum Of Delusion
Modern technical death metal is something of an odd beast; in its pursuit of perfection and technical wizardry, a lot of the spirit of death metal is lost. It becomes clinical, overly polished and soulless. Hailing from The Netherlands, SPECTRUM OF DELUSION set out to change that perception on sophomore album Neoconception. Their debut Esoteric Entity was well received – to follow it, the band are pulling out all the stops.
Neoconception is a concept record that revolves around a person’s experience of their reality falling apart, the world events following it and their journey of navigating these experiences and the new world. It’s taken the band four years to craft; they spent six months on the first chapter of the story alone to ensure they did the concept justice.
Opener Downfall kicks off with more standard tech death fare and complex polyrhythms but also utilises voice actors to set the scene, describing the path of an asteroid toward the planet. From stating the asteroid will miss and look very pretty in the sky we move to a calm acceptance from the newsreaders that humanity will shortly be annihilated by this looming threat. The occasional use of voice acting helps to break up the dense music and enhance the story being told.
Throughout Neoconception there’s always something going on. Bassist Jerry Kramer doesn’t just follow guitars or drums with his parts. Instead the fretless bass has its own clear and distinct identity, experimenting with techniques like slides. The opening moments of Destruction showcase this well, flipping the usual script and having the bass carry the melody with stabbing interruption from the guitars instead. It’s free-flowing and loose despite the otherwise calculated nature of the album.
The band love a good polyrhythm as well as syncopation and use them frequently without them coming across as formulaic or there for the sake of it, such as the near free jazz bass lick opening Pointless Endeavour recurs shortly after with the guitar mirroring it. Vocalist Douwe Negenman utilises it too, with his rapid fire vocal delivery late in Defunct Reality that serves to disorient before the song flows naturally into Animosity.
This is forward thinking technical death metal that eschews longer songs for sheer overwhelming force of numbers. Its thirteen track album flies by in a little shy of 45 minutes. Guitarist Frank van Rijswijk wrote the initial music and opted to forgo typical song structures for something altogether wilder and more chaotic that serves to feed into the overall concept of the record.
The production is crisp, if a tad loud. Each instrument is given space to breathe and are all clearly audible even during the busiest moments. Somewhat atypical of modern technical death metal, although production is as crisp as expected and seems a little loud – perhaps due to the busy nature of the songs – there’s huge dynamic range, breathing warmth into the overall sound especially the low end.
If there’s any criticism to be had, the sheer number of songs and ideas going on can make it overwhelming and easy to lose place. Instrumental interlude Bringing Serenity also feels out of place on the album; it’s nearly all acoustic and feels like an awakening or intro piece to a totally different record than the one it sits within.
Shorter songs can be great – they get in, do their damage and get out (Defunct Reality) but giving some ideas more time to develop instead of dropping them and jumping to the next would be welcome. Case in point here is Destruction that has some proggier tendencies and is by far one of the best songs on the album and its five minute runtime flies by. There’s also moments of real groove acting as the calm before the storm (Welcome Death, Await The Transition), offering short respite amongst the maelstrom.
Kramer’s bass work is an easy highlight of Neoconception as a whole; its prominence and inventiveness elevates the album above the hordes of tech death bands crowding the scene. Coupled with unconventional song structures and a concept that feels all the more relevant in this day and age, SPECTRUM OF DELUSION have crafted a solid sophomore effort, cementing their status as up-and-comers and ones to definitely be keeping an eye on.
Rating: 7/10
Neoconception is out now via The Artisan Era.
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