Architectural Genocide makes a smashing comeback.
Nearly six years after their debut album, the Texas band led by Daniel Brockway (vocals, ex-Cerebral Rot), Matt Day (bass, Stabbing), Nat Conner (drums, Dysmetria, Remorseless, ex-Stabbing) and Tom Savage (guitar) reunites with Comatose Music to unveil their second opus, Malignant Cognition.
The band chooses to “go easy” on us by starting Precursor to Bloodshed with some crackling that delays the arrival of the riffs, then the samples follow one another over a fairly simple rhythm, before the assault begins with Coercion Into Carnality, the first composition where the fat vocals mix with a thick rhythm. The band strings together mosh parts, taking advantage of accelerations thanks to blast beats, as on Leave It to Cleaver, which uses its slower parts to exploit Slam Death influences with an Old School mix, but a few shrill harmonics signal the transition to Trophies for My Murders, which offers us fairly similar patterns. The track is perfect for destroying your neck under the screams, following the accelerations and dissonant touches until Malicious Wager gives us our first few seconds of respite with an ominous sampled voice, followed by an equally dirty and explosive rhythm. My head slowly moves while the band plays, then more frantically during the central break before the track kicks back in, followed by the explosive Decent Deranged, one of the wildest compositions on the album in its moments of fury. There are still a few disturbing harmonic passages, but Zed Requiem takes over and gets us headbanging again with some fairly straightforward riffs in the purest Brutal Death tradition, to which the band once again adds those shrill, noisy notes. The singer’s growls fit perfectly with these waves of violence, then there is another moment of calm that is once again annihilated to begin Stuffed Under Floorboards, the last track similar to the previous ones and which is sure to delight fans of the style thanks to an equally fat and catchy sound that doesn’t miss an opportunity to get carried away again until the very last moment.
If you’re not familiar with Architectural Genocide, expect a blast of Old School Brutal Death Metal with Malignant Cognition! Enjoy the rare moments of calm, because they won’t last!
85/100