The first album from unconventional Warsaw, Poland-based power trio SPECIES, To Find Deliverance, leveled us with its rare blend of technical thrash prowess and unorthodox but highly inspired songwriting, enough to make 20 Buck Spin’s Best Of 2022 album list. Out of that list a collaboration was born, and now SPECIES is poised to make their label debut with their incoming second album, Changelings, also marking the first Polish act to sign with the label.
A step up in every regard, SPECIES’ Changelings is astonishing in its accomplished precision and how much it manages to achieve within the scope of individual tracks and as a cohesive whole. The album features an overload of angular guitar warfare, traditional Euro-thrash aggression with a modern resonance, rhythmic percussive seizures, and intricate basslines that make their intention deeply felt, not just following the guitar but dialoguing with it in a way that offers a second melodic brain to the album. In combination these elements thread seamlessly to give Changelings its colorful and uncanny vision, as if John Carpenter had co-produced Rust In Peace behind the iron curtain. It’s bristling with sci-fi paranoia, alien terror, and a hint of Cold War menace. The early convergence of thrash metal with death metal is also unmistakably present in the shape-shifting sound of SPECIES.
While there’s more than enough primitive and traditional thrash bands to go around, SPECIES embraces the genre’s lesser-travelled road of forward-thinking virtuosity and inventive experimentation, showing there’s still plenty of fertile ground to seed new musical territory. Nowhere is it more apparent than on 10-minute album closer “Biological Masterpiece,” where the band displays all its weapons; hyperspeed assaults, dystopian lulls, and instrumental mastery, in a climatic saga beyond space and time.
Produced by SPECIES and Filip Pągowski, the drums for Changelings were recorded at Nebula Studio by Tomasz Stołowski while the guitars, bass, and vocals were recorded at No Stress Studio by Filip Pągowski who also mixed the album. The album was mastered by at Subterranean Watchtower Studios by Damian Herring, completed with cover art and logo by Aleksandra Pawłowska and photography by Tomasz Kępka, and the song “Voyager” features synthesizers by Krzysztof Buffi.
Changelings is that rare album nowadays that still can surprise in the most triumphant and euphoric way possible: technical progressive thrash of the highest order. Adherents to the works of Coroner, Voivod, Kreator, Hypnosia, Anacrusis, Watchtower, Death, King Crimson, Rush, Master, Hexx, Horrendous, welcome SPECIES to your repertoire.
The lead single from Changelings arrives through a video produced and directed by Astral Films Studio with visual effects by Sławek Wojnicki for “The Essence.” With its deployment, the band reveals, “The song is about reuniting with the essence of life that flows throughout the universe by sacrificing the earthly boundaries and limitations. It’s about giving up on what is short-lived in exchange for a greater purpose. It’s a short, straightforward, dynamic and catchy track so we thought it would fit as a single.
“The music video itself is sort of a tribute to the old trippy television studio live performances (take Scorpions or Black Sabbath videos from the ‘70s) but with a little twist as we shot it in a bar and invited fans and friends.”
Watch SPECIES’ video for “The Essence” on YouTube HERE and stream the song everywhere including Bandcamp HERE.
Changelings will arrive on LP, CD, MC, and digitally on September 19th. Preorders have been made available at the 20 Buck Spin web arsenal HERE and Bandcamp HERE.
Anticipate the deployment of additional previews over the weeks ahead.
Changelings Track Listing:
1. Inspirit Creation
2. The Essence
3. Waves Of Time
4. Voyager
5. Born Of Stitch And Flesh
6. Terror Unknown
7. Biological Masterpiece
SPECIES is booking tour dates surrounding the album’s release and will be supporting the mighty Dark Angel in Wroclaw and Warsaw on August 4th and 5th. A release show and more are on the verge of being announced as well.
SPECIES Live:
8/04/2025 Zaklete Rewiry – Wroclaw, PL w/ Dark Angel
8/05/2025 Proxima – Warsaw, PL w/ Dark Angel
SPECIES:
Piotr Drobina – bass, vocals
Przemysław Hampelski – drums, percussion
Michał Kępka – guitars
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