by Snyde
Mon, 5 Feb 2024
Read in 4 minutes
"The conscious present is an awareness of the past (...) which the past’s awareness of itself cannot show." - T.S. Eliot
“Thrash metal” as a scene died in 1991, its coup de grâce coming in the form of a little black square from the San Francisco Bay Area. In less than a decade, the genre’s customs, tropes and taboos were codified, calcified and cast aside. As a natural off-shoot, technical thrash metal met its demise soon after the main branch had withered. Of course, a scant few bands held fast to their stylistic roots in the ensuing years but, in general terms, any thrash metal album released after 1993 (but especially after 2000, when the dust had settled on mainstream music’s identity crisis) can be called ‘revivalist’.
The audience for a ‘revivalist’ movement can be divided into two distinct factions: Enthusiasts and Newbies. The Enthusiast is well acquainted with the original scene and experiences the revival as an attempt to capture the magic of what came before. The Newbies simply experience, their judgment unclouded by memories of the past. As an Enthusiast, can’t help but view thrash through a honed yet deformed lens.
Bands that work to fit genres rather than attempt to create their own scene are instantly engaged in a struggle for The Enthusiast’s attention. Sovereign’s debut, Altered Realities (2024), is an example of an album that inevitably channels Pestilence’s Testimony of the Ancients (1991). By emulating a genre, you relinquish the right to be judged on your own merits and are instead measured against standards set far in the past. If you’re in the vanguard doing your own thing, everyone who’s listening to you is a Newbie .
Much like Sovereign, Dissimulator’s full-length debut, Lower Form Resistance (2024), walks well-trodden paths: “technical metal band with a science fiction aesthetic from Quebec” can be used to refer to a shockingly large number of bands. With that said, Dissimulator’s issue is not that they bow at the altar of Voivod. It is where they differ that the problem lies. Voivod were never trying to be like Voivod, they just were. The band had a vision, and that vision is now implied whenever the word Voivod is evoked. Dissimulator’s vision ultimately amounts to “tech thrash is pretty cool, isn’t it?” which, yes it is, but what of it?
Technicality for its own sake is an issue as old as technical metal itself, so in that sense Lower Form Resistance is remarkably faithful in its emulation of old school tech. The album is plagued by haphazard writing and disorienting structures which frustrate rather than excite. Drummer Philippe Boucher’s undoubtedly virtuosic playing is wasted on needless flourishes and an infuriating aversion to keeping a groove for more than a couple of bars (a potential holdover from his stints in bands more suited to this playstyle, such as Beyond Creation and First Fragment). This ultimately suffocates the inventive guitar work and leaves the listener dreading the next drum pattern switch, never properly engaged with the flow of the compositions, let alone the full scope of the album .
The vocal performance, varied as it attempts to be, is neither distracting nor particularly inspired. Claude Leduc’s growls are on display throughout the majority of the record but add very little texture to the music. A more involved vocal style may help give the album a distinct throughline which the listener can hold on to in the face of the musical whirlwind or, if handled poorly, it may make the album collapse completely into chaos.
I awarded Altered Realities a higher rating (7/10) than Lower Forms Resistance (5/10). This is despite Sovereign having created nothing more than “an old-school Pestilence record”. In the end, execution always trumps concept. Dissimulator have displayed the capacity and talent but must use their technical proficiency as a mere starting point and truly “create”. Indeed, I’m more excited for Dissimulator’s future prospects than Sovereign’s evolutionary dead end. Because while it’s rewarding to be an Enthusiast, everything feels like a miracle when you’re a Newbie .