Atheretic
Apocalyptic Nature Fury
7.1
I’m a fuckin’ bog beast when it comes to my death metal. You know, the kind of moss-coated colossus that slowly rises from the murky depths with swamp weed dripping from his maw, ferns growing from his ears, and an unquenchable thirst in his inky eyes for pummeling creatures whilst listening to rumbling, walloping, plodding death metal. During a time when my friends were hailing highly technical works from latter era Death, Pestilence, and Atheist, I was still pushing releases like Autopsy’s Mental Funeral, Benediction’s Grand Leveller, Goatlord’s Reflections of The Solstice, and Asphyx’s The Rack. See where I’m coming from? Eventually the more technical end of the death metal spectrum slowly began to sink into the rotted log that is my head, but it took quite a few years of intense training. To this day, my simple brain still has trouble digesting works from death metal acts that really push the envelope of technicality, and often times I find myself scratching my head with the same intensity as a half-wit trying to figure out how to re-fold a road map when it comes to some of the genre’s releases.
That being said, Montreal’s Atheretic are a highly technical death metal band. In fact, Atheretic are “kind of technical” like Nick Nolte’s “kind of strange” - it’s a helluvan understatement. This quartet swirls through 9 tracks of chaotic irruptions with such convulsing frenzy I was often forced to hit the ol’ stop button for fear of heart palpitations when I spun the damned thing. Perhaps my ‘technical palate’ is still a bit pink, but holy fuck this bastard’s a hailstorm. Apocalyptic Nature Fury does exactly what this band intends it to do, sonically; create a furious, vengeful, extremely chaotic storm with the intent to end the lives of every human being by its end. It’s actually pretty damned remarkable that one bassist, one guitarist, one drummer, and a vocalist can create such a cacophonous catastrophe. “Evolution”, “The Invisible Force”, “Solaris”, “Sphere”, and “Hunter of Seasons” all tore through my head like a twister through a trailer park, without once giving me a moment to dive into a ditch for safe haven. To be honest, it was a bit much. My untrained ear could have really used an ‘eye of the storm’, or perhaps one track of ‘lava flow destruction’ to help break things up. “Nature Laughs Last”, “Aquatic Redemption”, and “of Dust and Soil” had moments of (ahem) breakdowns, but even so, they still crashed through my face like detritus riding in on a tidal wave.
Following my initial spins, and based on my selective tastes regarding extreme technical death metal, I thought I would have to hand this record off to a different staffer for review, but there was something about Apocalyptic Nature Fury that kept me coming back. Even though I felt the record was overly chaotic, the lyrical themes struck me as quite refreshing (need I even say they deal with nature rising up against chimp?), and I found myself fascinated by trying to decipher what each musician was doing at any given time. In short, the album definitely won me over. The technicality of the musicianship on Apocalyptic Nature Fury is often times staggering, and the vocalist is a straight-up monster (Leblanc’s vocals are sadly buried at times on this recording). It’s my sincere hope the band incorporates some slower themed natural disasters on future releases, but for now, if you’re a fan of extreme technical death metal, Atheretic might be the hurricane you're looking for.
