For their third album, it’s a trip to Japan that Abiotic offers us.
Created in 2010 in the United States by par Matt Mendez (guitare) et Jonathan Matos (guitare), the band quickly releases an EP with a first line-up, then an album. They recruit Travis Bartosek (vocals) in 2014, then released a second album. The band takes two years of hiatus between 2016 and 2018, and it is now with Kilian Duarte on bass and Anthony Lusk-Simone (Pathogenic, ex-Coffin Birth…) on drums that they offer us Ikigai.
A soft introduction named Natsukashii introduces us to this japanese universe thanks to some folkloric sonorities, then the epic Ikigai throws us in this violent world. The extreme fastness and the maddest technicity collaborate for heavy and sharp riffs, without forgetting Prog influences, howlings and those Folk touches, then Covered the Cold Earth comes to crush us. Once again, the band doesn’t hesitate to think big to create a super powerful sound, with thanks to a lot of dissonance and raw strength. On Smoldered, the band is helped by Chaney Crabb (Entheos) for an astonishing vocal duo in addition to Djent influences and catchy bassdrops, as well as airy parts, on the contrary of The Wrath which plays on pure strength to nail us to the ground, diluted with a heady technicality. Musicians are skilled, and also determined to show us they are, including this worked touch to a majestic heaviness.
Rage predominates again for If I Do Die, an explosive and weighing song, on which the band created an oppressive atmosphere, while asking Brandon Ellis (The Black Dahlia Murder, ex-Arsis) to add a melodic and epic lead, while it is his bandmate Trevor Strnad (The Black Dahlia Murder) that lends his voice to the aggressive Souvenir of Skin. The song is as impressive, but the band also add some painful and visceral melancholy to the song, while keeping the violence up. Jared Smith’s bass (Archspire) joins the band on Her Opus Mangled for a soft melodic part between two blocks of heaviness, then the band goes back to epic and majestic tones thanks to Scott Carstair’s guitar (Fallujah) on Horadric Cube. Melomanes will enjoy the alternating between technicality and strength, geeks the gaming reference, but both will agree to headbang on the seizing Grief Eater, Tear Drinker while letting the heady clean voice of Jonathan Carpenter (ex-The Contorsionist) sublimate this violence. The contrast is beautiful, and the band will deliver the final stake with Gyokusai. The song sounds like the coming of the apocalypse. Its name comes from Japanese army’s suicidal charges, so we obviously find this dark part, this sudden acceleration and this nightmarish final.
Abiotic signs its great come back with not only an album with an impressive guestlist, but also an incredible quality. Even if the previous albums were amazing, Ikigai raises the bar again with brutal and considered compositions.
95/100