This one will take you a few listens to fully grasp it but that’s the beauty of it. It’s not something you’ve heard a thousand times before. You won’t be able to immediately point out its direct influences and pigeonhole it. But spend some time with it and you’ll be rewarded. Innovative death metal albums such as this one can’t be missed out on. Two of their shorter songs can be found on Bandcamp HERE, even though the album has its share of long and engrossing 8-12 minute ones too.
Members of the UK band Plague Rider, having gained notoriety for their work in bands like Live Burial, Dybbuk, and Horrified, are weaving together vile, repulsive, and challenging death metal music whose original influences are now twisted and decomposed beyond recognition. Sure, you can find bits and pieces here and there, traces of hair, fingernails, broken teeth fragments, but overall their music is too far gone for any obvious comparisons. And that’s only remarkable because it adds an element of uniqueness and unpredictability in their music, a rare thrill to be derived from this style these days. They’re turning the genre inside out, heaving up and down with the innumerable variations and progressions, metamorphosing from one style and growing anew into another. Despite the seemingly volatile and acerbic nature, there’s coherency and intuitive structuring in their music, and surprisingly still, memorability which comes to the fore upon multiple listens. The intricate, ever-evolving patterns start unravelling themselves with each one, encouraging the listener to discover more remaining obscure facets in their music. Plague Rider offer their most realized expression of music on their latest full length, which is singularly wild, unrestrained, and thrilling, and something tells me that they’re not done yet.
For fans of: Atheist, Diskord, Artificial Brain, Gorguts, Morbid Angel, Chaos Motion, Pyrrhon, Baring Teeth, Defect Designer
Line up –
Jake Bielby (Dybbuk, ex-Live Burial) – Guitar
Lee Anderson (ex-Live Burial, ex-Horrified) – Bass
James Watts (Dybbuk) – Vocals/Noise
Matthew Henderson (ex-Live Burial, ex-Horrified) – Drums
Track listing –
1. Temporal Fixation
2. An Executive
3. Modern Serf
4. Toil
5. The Refrain
6. Challenger’s Lecture
7. Without Organs
Official release date – November 10th, 2023