Counting on which faculty of thought you subscribe to, a phantasm is a figment of our creativeness that seems and looks like actuality. Larger however, within the occasion you fancy a lesson in linguistics, it’s born from the Greek verb Phantazein, which is to present to the ideas. And on the album of the equivalent title by British tech-death unit COGNIZANCE, that’s exactly what they do: they present to the ideas a physique of labor that lyrically and musically blurs the strains between fiction and actuality.
Whereas 2021’s Upheaval crushed all in its path with its brutal barrage of technical dying metallic, Phantazein evolves the band’s sound like a Digimon pill-popping their means by means of info. The frenetic freight put together of blast beats, growls and neck-snapping grooves continues to be rolling alongside the observe, however there’s an added stage of accessibility, as a result of the band embrace elements of melodic and blackened dying metallic.
Opener Ceremonial Vigour is solely that, bludgeoning blast-beats and blizzarding basslines collapse your cranium as buzzsaw guitars reduce by means of the fat with the swaggering groove the likes of LAMB OF GOD’s Mark Morton makes mincemeat out of. Adjust to-up A Thoughts Ineffective Memoir doesn’t dumb it down, blurring the strains between fiction and actuality as bassist Chris Binns and drummer David Diepold assemble ideas numbingly superior buildings, whereas guitarists Alex Baillie and Apostolis Karydis samurai slice their means by means of as melodic riffs skim the ocean like stones, providing assistance from a deep sea diver arising for air.
Whereas Upheaval excelled at perfecting the tech-death blueprint, Phantazein prospers most when COGNIZANCE play mad scientists, tinkering and twisting the very DNA of a mode they’ve mastered. Take Introspection, which begins with the breakneck depth of blast beats so brutal they’ll hammer nails into your fingers, sooner than giving choice to a schizophrenic burst of free-flow jazz-like fills, sooner than left-turning proper right into a cacophony of noise, with vocalist Henry Pryce guiding you via this hell growl-by-growl like an unreliable narrator.
Elsewhere, on Futureless Horizon, the band embrace IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT’s blizzarding blackened dying, as solemn string plucking affords choice to improvised drum fills, sooner than the observe corkscrews its means by means of a frenetic and ferocious rollercoaster journey designed to do harm to your insides.
By the purpose the formidable In Verses Unspoken and Shadowgraph stop the coaster and can help you off, there’s little query left in your ideas that COGNIZANCE should be topped the undisputed kings of technical dying metallic with Phantazein.
Rating: 9/10
Phantazein is about for launch on January twenty sixth via Willowtip Info.