While the sanitised riffs and rhythms of today’s burgeoning tech-metal scene are heavy enough to animate the masses into some sort of frenzy, the subgenre is generally eschewed by the extremists. So an album that fuses pig-squeal brutality with the typical forms of djent is bound to make some waves within the deathcore camp.
Multidimensional comes with the tick-box instrumental signals of the Meshuggah-influenced blueprint: low-gain, distorted, palm-muted riffs, elasticated guitar sounds and eerie atmospherics. But then comes the less predictable vocals of the Californian quintet’s frontman, even blowing the likes of Veil Of Maya out of the water.
You can hear this on the title track, which has terrifying vocal power combined with the kind of mechanical riffs that remind us of Korn. Illogical then pounds in with a groove and punishing breakdowns. Lifeforms aren’t afraid to throw in the odd clean-sung part, which works well but can’t help but sound a bit prissy in the context of this otherwise heavy-as-a-rhino debut.
