vote
7.5
A few months after the long-distance debut of Vulnificus, Comatose Music scores another good coup attributable to the state of health of the stars and stripes (brutal) death metal circuit, whose ability to churn out young and prepared realities – after the exploits of the early 2000s, when people like Deeds of Flesh, Disgorge and Odious Mortem churned out their masterpieces under the aegis of Unique Leader – seems to have become worthy again of this name.
Obviously, we cannot say that Architectural Genocide's second full-length is placed on the same level as a “Path of the Weakening” or a “Consume the Forsaken”, unrivaled in terms of effectiveness and personality, but this does not take away from the fact that our band, with this batch of songs, have put together a work capable of carrying forward the discussion in an uninhibited and convincing way, reiterating a certain taste for the formulation of atrocious constructs and always balanced between technique syncopated and percussive ignorance.
Music which, while continuing to boast the label 'for a few', to the point that even many death metallers might find its content indigestible, demonstrates how the Houston boys are progressively refining their language, starting from the formula of their debut “Cordyceptic Anthropomorph” (2020) to assemble a tracklist that is as methodical in terms of construction and deconstruction of its cues, as it is barbaric and moody from an expressive point of view; an aggression which, like that perpetrated by a maniac, arises from sordid and visceral impulses, but which knows exactly how to organize itself to stage a small theater of horror and excess.
In just over twenty minutes, “Malignant Cognition” therefore reshuffles the lesson of some cornerstones – above all, Disgorge and Devourment – in a flow which, in convulsive and intricate parts, typical of the so-called technical brutal death metal school, alternates groovy and pachydermal thrusts with a purely Texan cut, standing out for the good dose of ingenuity and meticulousness at the basis of the assembly, whose interlocking games – although set in a context abominable – highlight how the songwriting was not approached in a hasty or approximate manner, on the contrary.
Of course, in itself there is nothing strictly original and surprising in what the quintet pours into episodes like “Malicious Wager”, “Zed Requiem” or “Stuffed Under Floorboards” (starting from the samples based on confessions of serial killers), but the liveliness and spontaneity of the guitar work, combined with rhythmic constructs which in their contracting and relaxing, fragmenting and recomposing, do not struggle to convey a sense of constant mobility, are enough and they move forward to make listening a valid experience, ascribing the Architectural Genocide moniker to the list of those bands – Anal Stabwound, Stabbing, Submerged, etc. – which, especially overseas, are helping to revive the glories of the subgenre and its exasperating parables.
While waiting for “Eon of Obscenity” (of the aforementioned Stabbing), expected at the end of the month on Century Media (!), what is called a slaughter practiced with method and conviction.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
