Over Your Threshold
Facticity
6
Over Your Threshold is a band of young players still growing into their sound. Four years removed from playing straightforward death / thrash metal, this German outfit clearly used that time to sharpen their skills and adopt the more progressive / technical style of countrymen Obscura and Necrophagist. Though not yet quite as skilled as their more seasoned peers, these youngsters are at times better off for their relative lack of refinement. What Facticity lacks in the ability to surpass benchmarks of speed and complexity they can sometimes make up for with a propulsiveness generally lacking in the genre.
Facticity is most exciting when Over Your Threshold uses thrash's sharp edges to chip away at the hulking tech-death edifice the band seems compelled to erect. Close your eyes and drop into "Obscure Mind Stasis" mid-gallop and you'll be more likely to peg Over Your Threshold as acolytes of Arsis ca. A Celebration of Guilt than their modern contemporaries. Similarly, "Body Part Illusion" and "Obscure Mind States" prove Over Your Threshold entirely capable of employing speed and precision to elevate stock-standard melodic death metal. But Facticity is an entirely less compelling album when Over Your Threshold attempts to stand shoulder to shoulder with leading lights Obscura and Necrophagist, two bands that are are just glaringly better at this game. Despite my own ambivalence toward albums like Omnivium and Epitaph, I am fundamentally on board with their more is more conceit. Even the most ardent critics of those bands (I count myself among them) concede pro forma that they pushed the margins of speed and skill. Lacking that sort of pedigree, Over Your Threshold's attempts at pure exhibitionism are prey to both the genre's limitations and their own. Just drawing at random, a track like "Facticity," stakes claim to no edge, instead fabricating the idea of tech-death with tuneless, circular riffs and throbbing fretless bass. All aspiration, no innovation.
Fans of this style don't want to listen to you learn on job.
This isn't to say Over Your Threshold can't play. They can fucking play. Unless you're from Quebec, these guys would automatically be the best musicians you knew if you met them. But their lunch is still going to get eaten. Over Your Threshold could eat, though, should they redouble efforts to make melodic death / thrash metal sing through their developing technical prowess. But, when they tilt the equation too far in the other direction, emphasizing a display of talents that's clearly a cut below their peers, everyone goes hungry.
