First things first...will you get a load of that cool looking beastie adorning the cover of Casuistry! That's metal folks!
Now, on to the album. Casuistry is the sophomore release from Florida technical death metal/deathcore act Abiotic, who now find themselves on Metal Blade Records. Produced by Jamie King at Basement Recordings, a guy who has worked with the likes of Between the Buried and Me, Wretched, and The Contortionist, Casuistry pushes all the right buttons as far as what a technical, brutal extreme metal album should sound like, but it all comes down to the songwriting and musical execution, and the band have done a fine job in that department. Travis Bartosek (vocals), Johnathan Matos (guitar), Matt Mendez (guitar), Alex Vazquez (bass), and Brent Phillips (drums) have managed to create a batch of songs that are actually fun to listen to, something that you can't always about some of the overly complicated tech-death albums or generic deathcore releases these days. Mixing plenty of brutality with jaw-dropping guitar passages, complex arrangements, jackhammer drumming, punishing breakdowns, and Bartosek's variety of growls, grunts, screams, and bellows (most of which you can easily understand), the band have come up with a winning formula. "Violent Scriptures" simply crushes from start to finish, "Reanimated Destruction" dazzles with technical virtuosity, "Nightmares of Your Conception" throws together memorable melodies with mosh ready breakdowns, and "Falling into Obscurity" lends a djent-meets-prog sensibility to the mix.
In the end, Casuistry is an album that's easy to like, as it has just the right amount of violent brutality, blazing guitar solos, nimble bass lines, technical passages, acrobatic drumming, and maniacal vocals to please any extreme metal fan. Oh yeah, and that creature on the cover is just too cool for words.
Track Listing
- Believe the Unseen
- Reanimated Destruction
- Cast into the Depths
- Violent Scriptures
- Nightmares of Your Conception
- The Absence of Purity
- Falling into Obscurity
- Molecular Rematerialization
- Drain. Deface. Abolish.
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