EP REVIEW: Divinihility – Atræ Bilis

In today’s digital climate, to make an immediate impression and to stand out in the crowd with your craft is an intimidating and daunting task indeed. The boom and rapid acceleration of the digital age has enabled a gargantuan size of music being available, quite literally, at the fingertips of the music fan and whilst that’s good for their consumption, for emerging bands, you really have to be offering something special with your debut outing to make a mark. Fortunate then, that Divinihility, the debut offering from Canada’s ATRÆ BILIS is a compact and calculated offering that shines with quality.

Too many records in this bracket of extreme music take the easy route and use the first song on a record to set a foreboding and epic atmosphere through a short and tension-building instrumental opener. It’s incredibly refreshing then that ATRÆ BILIS opt to showcase their monstrously heavy guitar tones in opener Gnode. Chugging riffing sets a dangerous precedent and provides a snapshot into what the band is going to offer here, but it is with Sulphur Curtain where ATRÆ BILIS really demonstrate their chops. Here, the band come out in full force as brutal riffing bounces from snappy high-octane riffing to a mid-tempo technical rage whilst vocalist Jordan Berglund impresses with his dynamic range; switching from low gutturals to Corpsegrinder-esque bark to wonderful effect.

It’s not just an out and out tech death assault however. Across the record’s runtime there are various flirtations of tone and style that really help the band stand strongly on their collective feet. Ectopian, arguably one of the record’s finest offerings, features a wonderful splash of black metal-esque riffing that really helps the song sound all the more sinister whilst Upon The Shoulders of Havayoth sticks firmly to the rulebook of brutal tech-driven death metal, and really benefits from the variation of pacing. This allows the song to expand and sink its claws in for a much deeper and impactful bite. It is indeed moments like this that showcase the true potential within the ATRÆ BILIS camp.

And yet, for everything that the band get right (and there really is a lot of quality here), Divinihility is just too damn short. With six songs and a total runtime weighing in at around the 22 minute mark, the record finishes just as you feel it really is finding its groove and personality. Don’t get us wrong here, the six songs that ATRÆ BILIS present here are stupendous tech-death of the highest order, but upon Divinihility‘s conclusion, you are just yearning for more. If anything, it makes the anticipation for a full-length debut all the more agonising but judging from what is on offer with Divinihility, the wait will be worth it.

Compact, calculated and devilishly slick, Divinihility is a fine first effort from ATRÆ BILIS. The Canadians have come flying out the gates with a sound that will appeal to anyone who has a craving for death metal that is technical, expansive and wickedly brutal. This is a record that showcases heaps of potential and if the band can not only replicate the standards that Divinihility boats, but surpass it next time out, then we’ll be onto a truly special band indeed.

Rating: 8/10

Divinihility is out now via Transcending Obscurity Records.

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