By Ryan Falla
The death metal younglings Reaping Asmodeia look to build on the success of their 2013 debut record ‘Poison of the Earth’ with their new release ‘Impuritize’. Like any good death metal band, right out of the first track they build a settlement within your face; zero intentions of abandoning their new home by bashing your face in deeper and deeper as the record plays on. Although Reaping Asmodeia plays with a lot of standard death metal elements, there is a fair amount of ingenuity behind the musical talents of ‘Impuritize’.
A lot of what is happening with ‘Impuritize’ is broken up with an intense focus on destroying the natural order of musical time; Reaping Asmodeia builds ‘Impuritize’ with a vision of how they want their music to find structure. Tracks such as ‘Defenestration’ highlight an atypical death metal approach, mixing in strong elements of European power metal before blazing off into death metal impurity. While the band tends to rip through their tracks with the blaze of a flamethrower immolating up a foxhole, when they take it slow they show off how deep their talents run.
‘Collage of Toxins’ takes a slower progressive approach to their formula, showing off an incredible precision in their musical talents. Sure the drumming is so brutally consistent, tendons flare up just listening; the precision of speed is unbelievable, yet when the band drops the tempo down to half of what they’ve established, both the talent and songwriting prowess of Reaping Asmodeia shines with a great darkness.
The songwriting ability present within ‘Impuritize’ is not the only impressive quality, as the technical ability of the musicians is phenomenal; manipulating time as the Sorcerer Supreme. ‘Impuritize’ shows off both ends of the technical death metal spectrum, presenting the band’s 200mph approach and slower doom elements with equal strength.
‘Irreversible Evolution’ is probably the best example of the band twisting and turning through the technical metal spectrum as they formulate elements of heavy technicality, thrash metal, power metal, classic prog and generally anything they can add to spice to their formula without overbearing the music.
The technical prowess of Reaping Asmodeia debatably makes them one of the better tech-death bands in the scene, not solely due to their ability as musicians but the technical wizardry within the album ‘Impuritize’.
This record comes as recommended just off the pure talent Daniel Koppy provides on the drums. The precision, intensity and ingenuity present in his drumming isn’t just unbelievable, it’s downright unholy. There has to be some satanic dealings at play.
Anyhow, this is a great album and (probably) not influenced by Satan; because Satan himself couldn’t inspire such technical devilry present within Reaping Asmodeia’s ‘Impuritize’. This is a must listen for any tech-death fans looking to expanding their catalogues with new, quality acts and albums.
If you’re looking to revitalize your death metal catalog with new life, look no further than ‘Impuritize’ by Reaping Asmodeia, you’ll find this record to hold more than what many death-tech acts can offer.
Rating: 9/10
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Record Label: Prosthetic
Release Date: February 24th 2017
Track Listing:
01. The Clemency Guise (4:41)
02. Defenestration (4:21)
03. Of Talons And Teeth (3:53)
04. Hidebound (5:10)
05. Carnal Declivity (4:51)
06. Irreversible Evolution (4:17)
07. Virulent Exposure (0:49)
08. Collage Of Toxins (4:56)
09. Ritual Of Ignorance (5:10)
Total Duration: 40:08
Reaping Asmodeia links: website | facebook | twitter | instagram | bandcamp